


The Golden Contract

by ActivationofFate



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Memory Loss, Powerful Jon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2018-10-24 18:01:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10746930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ActivationofFate/pseuds/ActivationofFate
Summary: “They say Fire is the champion of House Targaryen in trial by combat, but the end is older than this day, Viserys. You may have won a thousand battles, but you will lose this war. You can’t kill a man with the same trick twice. You took my family away from me, but at the same time, you gave me the secret of how to kill you. The Champion of House Stark has always been Winter.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this is a AU I came up with a couple of months ago. I'm not a native English speaker, so regrettably, mistakes might happen. I hope there aren't too many.

There are no Gold Cloaks, she thinks, quickly. That’s good. All the City Watch must be assembled inside the Red Keep, as it should be. The wind forces her to hide futilely inside the wagon bow, as the pebblestone road keeps biting the wheels, in their wake. The air spilling from the harbors into the maze of streets is somehow different today, and even in her young age, she could tell merchants, whores, peasants, and even drunken men from alehouses were smoothing in with it, people walking sedately, and crooking their necks every now and then to the great Castle’s walls. There’s an epidemic sense of joy building up as the outer rings of the city become smaller, yet even if she forces herself to share the same, she knows her insides were far from it.

She couldn’t remember the last time she was in King’s Landing. Probably, the day of her brother’s wedding to Catelyn Tully, yet all the times she dreamed of her return to the Capitol, she thought her arms would feel blessed like the embrace of her mother Lyarra in the North, her cheeks would become fresh like a kiss on the forehead from her Father Rickard, and her hair would meet the sky like a ride on her favorite horse. Nothing of her speaks that way now. Nothing. She would trade all her younger years to feel that again, but not for her, but for the most important thing she has now. After all, that’s all that matters now, and she wonders if she still can fight for it, to protect his future like she couldn’t do with her own. 

“So, this isn’t Summerhall anymore, right Jon?” She speaks softly.

Her eyes spy on the little bundle between her arms. With a silky touch, she peels the blankets off his baby’s face and grey eyes look up at her, too vivid and alert. He is upset with the noise, and that gives her a rush of hope. Too much like his Father. Yet, the thought brings also sorrow to her beautiful complexion, and hopes Jon ignores that. Curiosity is on his eyes, so she lifts him up just when her mare slows down after riding across the Plaza, and together they both watch the first towers of the King’s Seat, peering in the distance.

“Look.” Lyanna whispers, softly, in his ear. “That’s your new home.” 

The babe saw it then. The great-bronze Gatehouse of the Red Keep climbed into the horizon crushingly, too big and immense for his small eyes to make it fully. Lyanna smiles, and flicks the reins. Screams and eruptions first only fishwives and then, buyers, blacksmiths, stable boys and inn-keepers, pour into their way as they ride, a living sea of hands try to reach for the air shell of their ride while the speed keeps them at bay. Lyanna knows why they are for, after all when was the last time the King’s sister came here for a visit, and with the royal birth… 

She sighs and looks at Jon again. I’m an awful person, she thinks.

King’s Landing was welcoming his new King. Her Brother Ned and his wife Catelyn had become parents to a baby boy. The raven had reached her a few days ago when she was in Summerhall recovering from her own childbirth, and she couldn’t be happier with the news. Ned and Cat had longed for an heir their entire lives, yet for many years her good sister had issues with getting pregnant. But when it was finally official, Lyanna was the first one to congratulate them, dreaming with the day her son and her nephew could finally meet each other. But this was before everything happened.

Now she couldn’t escape from it. Jon and Robb were going to meet each other, but this world was different than the one she had in mind. Too different.

The wagon stops. She knows her Brother’s court is not expecting her, so she doesn’t dare to cross the drawbridge, yet either way she hears distant hooves and for a moment the sound is relaxing. She has nothing to be afraid here. A mounted quintet closes the Gate from edge to edge and she sees five armored riders like silver edifices, banners with a black stag on a field of gold flapping proudly in their hands. The first removes his helmet, releasing a thick mane of hair, and nears his huge horse to her, peering beneath the wagon bow to try and tests his reputation.

“So, the Master of Law now comes to receive the guests?” Lyanna asks, playfully, revealing herself. The brown-haired knight almost falls from his saddle.

“Lyanna…” He whispers, while his guardsmen share looks of utter shock. She smiles, cradling Jon.

“Hello Robert.” She leans forward and gives her brother’s best friend a kiss in the cheek. He immediately dismounts and helps her to do the same.

“What are you doing here?” He demands, with his usual tenor voice. “Do you want to kill your own brother when his son is not even a year old?”

“I believe the Realm is doing that for me.” She explains, while nearing Jon to Robert’s horse so the baby can entertain himself. Then, she sighs and the light mood is gone. “Look, I came because I need to speak to him. If this weren’t important, I wouldn’t—”

“You jumped into a wagon and came to King’s Landing alone with Jon, that’s important enough for me.” He declares and ruffles Jon’s little black hair with his big hand. “He will be glad to see you.”

“And I to see him.” Lyanna says while her eyes jump from one soldier to the other. None of them seem to support Robert’s words and she frowns confusedly. “What’s wrong?”

Robert sighs, and his blue eyes survey the highest peaks of the Red Keep distractingly until they settle on Maegor’s Holdfast. Clouds are piling in the far west, so there’s nothing between the rooftops and the sun in its highest phase, and at first sight it looks like a prophesized day. It’s only then Lyanna realizes the bells of the city are not ringing, and a shadow of suspicion settles in her young face. 

 

“And?”

Ned Stark feels his own voice a little more urgent than usual when he sees Grand Maester Pycelle’s shape coming out from the royal bedchambers. He feels like his eyes had not seen the sun for a fortnight almost, and the only space and time his body doesn’t seem to reject is the bench he is currently occupying, in a fashion that’s not too kingly. Every trace of the King he was had abandoned him this last couple of days, and should he look himself in a mirror, the extra amount of facial hair would probably be more fitting for someone like Robert than him. Shadows of Old Kings rest in his weary eyes, which follow the old Maester in his short trek to his site of vigil. 

“The night was kind to Her Grace this time,” He announces, though his voice is raspy and breathless. “Yet…”

“She won’t wake up.” Ned finishes, feeling like the floor underneath him is sinking.

Catelyn had a rough childbirth a few days ago. Ned hadn’t intended it to be official, since he had hoped his wife awakes any time soon, but days went on and she remained in a fever sleep, and the succession of hours after that did not bring the best prospects. Day and night, he would sit outside his solar and stare at the ripples in the door, in a routine that had not been with him since his Mother Lyarra died. He wasn’t King in those days though. He knew Catelyn would be furious if she knew how much he was leaving behind, especially if she knew the tidings that emerged in the Small Council’s table these days and did not reach the King’s ears when they were supposed to. But how could he? How could he be the man everybody expects him to be when his son…?

“We need to find another wet nurse for the Prince, Your Grace.” Jon Arryn, the Hand of the King, tells him, standing under a wall sconce and next to him. He was the one who preceded the Small Council’s meetings in his absence, even in his own grief for Ned knew how much he cared for Catelyn. “Robb will die if his mother can’t feed him.” 

“So, you want to welcome all lowborn women through the Castle’s gates just to find one amongst them, Lord Arryn?” Lord Janos Slynt, the Master of Coin, sneers. “Perhaps we should ask Robert, I bet he has hundreds.”

“Hundreds maybe… But they do little wrong compare to the hundred Gold Cloaks you sent to brutalize the merchants in Cobbler’s Square, Lord Janos.” The King chastises, with eyes as sharp as Ice. “I will not have my people suffering because of your poor handling in political fares.”

“I only live to serve the Realm, Your Grace. And my King.” He argues, airily. “Mingle the commoners into our Halls will only install chaos, the same I’ve been battling in the streets.”

“So, you would have my son starve?” Ned replies, sparks of anger leave his eyes and he stands up, stormily.

Walking to the human-size windows, he leans into the precipice to watch the distant Blackwater’s Bay and the ships docking in the harbors, while the eyes of his three most trusted advisors follow him in silence. For a moment, he yearns for the North, he yearns for the salty air to become a winter wind like the ones he used to see when he was a child, and he yearns for the touch of the Wolfswood to help his son in what his Father clearly couldn’t, like it did with its hungry children. Robb was only a few days old, yet his cradle was the Iron Throne and his face will be in the colorful tapestries amongst the Kings of Westeros one day. He has a strong grip, for being so young, yet the tossing and cries are only because he needs his Mother, just like King’s Landing populace needs him.

“The Prince can’t go through another night like this.” Maester Pycelle continues, fingering his long white beard. “I’m sure we can find a lady with recent child in the Realm until the Queen recovers from her illness.”

“Very well.” Janos Slynt chants. “Lord Tarly’s wife gave birth recently to a boy. She will do.”

“In Horn Hill?” Jon Arryn opens his old eyes in bemusement. “That’s eight hundred miles away.”

Ned sighs, and the voices of the company muffle behind the squawks of seagulls in the sky. He closes his eyes for a second, as his heavy cloak takes flight with the swirl of the wind and the gargoyles at both his flanks sustain a thin film of salt. Robb releases another cry in the adjacent room.

“Summon Varys.” He states finally. “No one better for the job. I want his little birds to find someone so we can bring her at court.”

“I believe Varys’s little birds were a little late this time, brother.” He hears at his back, and his eyes go wide.

He turns around in one single motion and joins the unanimous shock when he sees Lyanna at the end of the corridor, escorted by Robert. This is an illution, he thinks first. He had been evoking far too much the memories of his homeland as of late, yet the face of his friend does not dare to lie, even less the shape of the woman next to him, whom he knows too well. Lyanna, his sister and wife to the heir of House Targaryen. The sister he had not seen since his own wedding because…

“Lyanna…” He whispers, like he was talking to a ghost. She smiles, warmly, and for a moment Ned sees the light of his own mother in her.

“Lady Stark.” Jon Arryn bows, as well as Maester Pycelle. Janos Slynt suppresses a snort. 

“What are you doing here?” Ned asks, and for a moment, his eyes scan the newcomers until they stop in the little buddle Robert is holding. This can’t be Robb. “Is it…?”

“My son, Jon.” She says softly but anger seats in her face after the announcement. “Why didn’t you tell me Catelyn was sick, Ned?”

“And you…” He adds, but his mind fogs with the revelation of his nephew and still unexpected shape of his sister. Clearing his throat, he asks. “Rhaegar. Why did he let you come here alone?”

A shadow climbs in her beautiful face, while her hands come up to release her long brown braid from the hood. Ned reads rapidly his sister’s change of mood and something grips his stomach, for that quick inspection brings him back to the few times in the past where both siblings actually saw the end of the world. Is this going to end? He asks, when he sees the thin line in her lips and her colorless cheeks, a sight even the North would claim as a bad augur.

“Rhaegar is dead.” She admits in a tight voice.

Ned and his three advisors are hit with something close to a crossbow. Maester Pycelle’s jaw is slightly dislocated and Janos Slynt looks like he’d just jumped out the window. For a moment, silence settles in as conqueror as the sea, and it’s only interrupted by Robb’s constant cries and Jon’s timid responses. Lyanna’s eyes seek for her brother’s, who’s still digesting her words, and gives a step forward.

“I’ll tell you everything about why I’m here,” She declares, pushing aside the tears, but can’t do the same with fear. “But first, I need to see Robb.”

 

“Rebellion?” Janos Slynt slurs, in shock. “That’s absurd.”

The assembly had been called upon midnight. Ned weights each of their individual looks from his high seat in the Small Council’s table, while the torchlight extracts spectrums of shadows out of their bodies. Lyanna shifts uncomfortably in her chair next to her brother and Robert, since she was still an outsider here and, at the same time, one of the lasts who arrived after putting both babies to nap.

“She’s not lying.” Robert Baratheon states, with a chilling voice. “I had no love for Rhaegar, but I had even less for his wrecked family who dared call themselves supporters of the Crown once. Should’ve seen treason coming from the bloody dragons.”

“My son is still a Targaryen, Robert.” Lyanna affirms. “And Rhaegar believed in a bond between House Targaryen and the Crown. He was the one who tried to talk some sense into Viserys, and was murdered for it.”

“Viserys would never do something like that.” Janos Slynt argues. “He’s the second in succession to Summerhall and always has been a friend to the Crown.”

“Then why did I leave?” Lyanna asks, sharply. “Would I have my son killed just like his Father was? Viserys called his banners and is massing a force in Summerhall to strike King’s Landing. He wants the Throne, and he wants Ned and Robb’s heads when he does. If he was capable of murdering his own brother, what do you think he will do with them?”

Ned weights his sister’s strong eyes for a moment, or for a very long piece of forever. Robert looks just like someone who wants to unsheathe his sword and release storms into his enemies’ paths, but the rest are as stiff and mute as the marble in the columns. King’s Landing had not been taken in a hundred years, nor in any way would Ned think it will likely happen again. Not from the dragonlords, not when he believed House Targaryen to be akin after Lyanna and Rhaegar’s wedding. All these years, the black cells underneath the Keep had been almost empty, for the few rebellious nucleuses which sprouted during his rulership were successfully evacuated, thanks to the City Watch deployed under Robert’s restless eye. And yet since becoming King, the only matter which tormented him was the fact that he couldn’t produce an heir with his wife. 

“Did someone follow you?” He asks his sister. She shakes her head rapidly.

“No. Rhaegar made sure all his personal guard was with me and Jon before—” She trails off and her instincts make her seek for her baby but she knows he was safe sleeping next to his cousin. “They were all killed when we were trying to escape.”

“Ned, let me go to the stormlands.” Robert demands, seriously. “Renly and I will take an army with us and reduce the dragonspawn and his men to pieces.”

“Too easy words of war become acts of war, Robert.” Ned scolds. “And The Realm is not prepared to be divided in such a way. You have my permission to go and call upon the Storm knights but I want you to ask for a parley with Viserys first in a place both parties deem suitable.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“I want ravens to all of the Lords in Westeros, my Brother Benjen in the North and my father-in-law in the Riverlands.” Ned continues. “Lyanna and Jon will stay here in the Red Keep. Should negotiations fail, I will make sure my nephew remains safe from the Targaryens. I fear his life might be in more danger than mine, considering he’s the heir to their House now. I’m sure Robb will be glad to have a playmate.”

Lyanna smiles, gratefully. Each of the members of the Small Council took turns to evacuate their doubts in the current session, some more alarmed than others and the rest trying their best to duplicate their King’s serenity, but the only one who remained silent, and astutely alert, was Janos Slynt, in the last chair of the table. Lyanna looks at him uneasily and feels shivers in her neck and shoulders, since his eyes appear like vertical slit pupils in this angle of firelight. She had this bad feeling clutching her heart, like the day Rhaegar went off to face his brother, gave her one last smile from atop of his horse and never came back again.

This is ridiculous, she thinks, as Ned voices that the meeting was over. This was probably the exhaustion talking. 

She was the last one to leave, clutching a fur-trimmed cloak she had borrowed from Catelyn to her pale shoulders and heads straight to Maegor’s Holdfast, where the chambers her brother had made up especially for her awaited. Before opening the doors, she smiles to herself. A cry happened. Lyanna sneaks inside as quiet as she can with a pillar of soft light streaming behind her. The double crib was set up just beneath the windows and both babies were awake, eyes big and watery in the biting dark. 

“What is it, Jon?” She asks her son, who has dry tears in his little cheeks. “You don’t like him?”

Robb has a tiny fist close to his cousin’s face and seems unable to keep quiet, while Jon is upset with his antics. Lyanna laughs, for he was still too young to actually frown. And then, her eyes contort into sadness because a memory of Rhaegar and Viserys came to the present. Now, Viserys had taken her husband away from her, not caring if he was his blood, if he was his family. Only thirst for power, that’s all that remained of the blonde boy she once knew. Men kill each other for power, but not these two. She promises to herself. Not Robb and Jon.

“Please, take care of one another, no matter what happens.” Lyanna pleads, while her fingers brush Robb’s little red curls. The baby looks up at her with curiosity… but then his blue eyes widen when a howl breaks into the chambers.

Lyanna stands up quickly, and runs to the windows. The city lies asleep, yet the night breeze was bringing faint echoes of different howls from the distant Kingswood. She covers her mouth with her hands, because the sound was… despairing. The sound was a call for the North. The sound was a call for home.

“Wolves… here in the Crownlands?” She wonders. Somehow, that alone brought back memories of her childhood in the Wolfswood. But it can’t be. 

With her body pressed against the windowsill and eyes glued to the night sky, she fails to see how the door opens behind her. And someone slips inside.

 

** Ten years later **

 

“Your Grace, the King requires your presence in the Small Council’s Hall.”

Catelyn Tully lets her hands fall flatly after the announcement. The Seven look down on her as she rises from her praying stance, just like they always did when duties as Queen of the Seven Kingdoms called. She knows her thoughts could never really leave the sept even if she physically did now, no matter where she was, and inwardly begs them to guide her, to inspire her, and to follow her when the steps to take before her were unwanted. Lately, there’re so few hands left to reach when everything seem to be herald of bad news.

And also, she knows what awaited her today. It’s been ten years since Ned’s sister Lyanna Stark had died unexpectedly, murdered the day she came to King’s Landing with Jon after her escape. As Catelyn was in a fever sleep, she only found out about it many days later, when the face of her husband stricken with grief welcomed her with the terrible news. And from that day on, Ned had never been the same again. After all, his sister was killed under his roof, and under the protection of the Kingsguard, but that also served to narrow things down in order to identify the murderer. That night, Janos Slynt had disappeared from the Capitol. A man who all this time had been a Targaryen loyalist, secretly plotting with Viserys to betray the King, but still hidden under his cover as Master of Coin so no one would suspect of him. Ned had ordered a capture to bring him to the King’s justice, but yet to this day his whereabouts remain a mystery for he was never seen again.

“Why? Any news about him?” She asks Ser Preston Greenfield, the first member of the Queensguard, as she does her way out of the sept. The knight shakes his head, striding behind her.

“No. But a letter arrived… from the Riverlands.”

Her heart sinks. Her Father had recently joined the war, she knew, but the rumors were only making it worse for her, as there’re tales of the Lannisters from the West forming an alliance with the Targaryens. If that was true, then Hoster Tully would have it very difficult to plan the offensive. She tries to keep her worries at bay as she keeps on walking.

Her dress of blue lambswool was skirting across the marble floor in a hurry, almost like it knows when she would take a curve and fold itself needlessly. Her face was no different, always knowing and always fearing. Sedately she walks, as a Queen, but still can’t hide her distress and her own mind is betraying her as well. With a quick glimpse to the exterior, she drinks in the sight of the ramparts full of guardsmen walking their rounds. Why so many? She wants to scream. This is so wrong.

“There’s no need to be worried, Your Grace.” Ser Preston assures her. 

He and Ser Hugh of the Vale had taken their duties as her personal escort today, and both keep a close formation in her rear. Her steward, Cayn, is trotting behind them in a poor attempt to keep their pace. Catelyn only shrugs, under her heavy cloak of soft white fox fur. When she turns right in the last column, finally the Hall of the Small Council narrows her way and she feels the air tightening in her throat. Be strong for Ned and Robb.

“Your Grace…”

“Your Grace…”

Her strong blue gaze takes a moment to reach all the members of the Small Council, from the nearest to the furthest, in a clear demonstration that today she wasn’t a woman but their Queen and her skin was no kinder than steel or iron, just like them. Her eyes look for her husband lastly. Ned had aged so much these last few years he was almost unrecognizable, like an old man of one hundred instead of his forty. Red veins were starting to cradle his drained eyes and he looks up at her. Catelyn had the sick impression the only reason he was still straight in his head chair was because Robert was holding him, at his side. The air doesn’t return to her body. Before she could take her place, her heart leaps, when she sees a pile of scrolls over the table, wax seals from every House in Westeros, including the leaping fish of the Tully’s, so many that Ned’s arms had convulsed under them.

“Ned… This…”

“They’ve lost, Cat.” Was all he said, his strength resting on the seabed of the Narrow Sea. “Viserys Targaryen won.”

No… No. It couldn’t be. Catelyn grasps the collar of her tunic and thousand knives cut her open from throat to stomach. She staggers despairingly to find someone in this table to contradict their King’s words, it has to be someone, but no one speaks, no sound reaches her. Only time. Her father. Her House. Riverrun burning and she had been too far away.

“How did this happen?” She finally says.

“House Lannister has joined forces with Viserys Targaryen, Your Grace.” Jon Arryn informs her. “Hoster Tully raised his arms against them. When the northern army came to his aid it was too late.” 

King’s Landing has only hours now. That remained unsaid but it was only the truth no one denies. Catelyn feels a cold twist in her guts and her flesh might as well be eaten by the seagulls in the shore. Stay strong for Robb, she remembers. She takes one scroll from the table with trembling fingers and her eyes race to Jon Arryn, deliberately.

“And my sister Lysa? Your son?”

“The Vale has not been attacked.” Lord Arryn promises her, though little could be spoken of comfort. “She and Robin are in a safe place, though. The real prize…”

The real prize is the King’s head, she thinks miserably. This could not be happening.

“The heir of House Targaryen did gain the position he was hoping for, I’m afraid.” Lord Varys agrees, without his usual flowery touch. “Even if his last attempts were indeed suffocated.”

“The son of a whore has rallied an army of 150.000 strong now that he has Tywin behind him.” Robert snorts. “Benjen couldn’t have done anything from the North. Not even with all the wildings fighting by his side.”

“If he comes to our doorstep, King’s Landing will withstand the thrust, Your Grace.” Ser Barristan placates them, with a knowing look. “It will give enough time for the army’s reserves to come and attack them in the rear.”

“And who will come, Ser Barristan?” Ned says. His eyes seem to be ready for the onslaught any time. “Ten years ago, my sister came to this very Hall and warned me something like this could happen. I did not listen to her the way a King always should… and I lost her. I’m paying for my sins now.”

The King’s fingers were almost white, and fingernails blue, clawing the last bits of the armrests and looking down, like this table alone was the last piece of the realm he had swore to protect.

“I will not let the ones I love suffer the same fate as hers.” He declares, after a silence. “I want a word to Stannis, Robert. Ask him how many fighting men and ships he has in Dragonstone.”

“Yes, Your Grace.” Robert nods.

“Ser Barristan.” He turns to the old knight at the other end of the table. “Jon and Robb are forbidden to leave the Red Keep. Also, from this day on, they will have four of the Kingsguard guarding them day and night. The gold cloaks will be committed to the city walls, I want six thousand men patrolling the capitol from the Mud Gate to the Gate of the Gods and the road to Rosby and I want the people to see them as they do.”

“Ned, the people…” Catelyn says, hurriedly.

“…need to know what’s coming.”

Catelyn only closes her mouth, in a thin blue line. 

She never expected to hear so much in one day when she left the Hall of the Small Council, tremulously. Blood was pounding in her ears, almost blurring her sight, and she braces her body with the thick stone walls before attempting to walk. But then, the morning gave her another major headache, when Lady Tanda appeared at the end of the passageway, fussing and scowling.

“Your Grace… May I have a word?” She asks, unpleasantly.

“What is it, Lady Tanda?” Catelyn answers, using her most dutiful tone.

“My necklace of sapphires and moonstones.” She snaps. “The pride of House Stokeworth. The one which’s been in my family for over one hundred years is gone. I want that wrecked little boy to return it immediately.”

“Which one? Jon or Robb?” Catelyn sighs. Yes, this morning was going to be long.

“I don’t know. I can’t tell them apart, you know that.” The old lady hisses. “All I know is that I want it back now and see the one who did it is rightly punished for such perversion.”

“Yes, yes.” Catelyn prompts, though mostly because she wanted to get rid of her as soon as possible. “Don’t worry. I’ll talk to them, my Lady.”

Catelyn huffs in annoyance. It was way too early in the day to deal with this.

 

“Please My Lord, we don’t know any Janos Slynt. We’ve never heard of this name before.”

“Really? You’re the biggest sellsword’s company in these woods, and yet you claim to ignore the man who pays the highest rewards?”

“We never took a job from him. Please, let us go.”

There’s a big snort, combined with the sound of rustling leaves in the clearing. The bigger man moves like a trapped deer in the massive net hanging from one of the trees, while the lesser members are caught beneath his weight in a ball of swords, legs and arms. Swaying from one side to the other, there’re screams erupting from the giant trap when somehow one of them ends up facing a chain of sharp teeth bare to them from the bottom, or a growl from one of the two beasts, flanking both ways. The boy with the auburn curls and mocking eyes gives two steps so the faint light could catch up his face and meet the outlaws straight to the eye, and somehow he looks pleased with himself.

One of his hands reaches for the big grey direwolf, the biggest of the two, and strokes his head with a thoughtful glance.

“Are you lying to me?” He asks the leader again, boldly. “You know, lying to the King is a terrible thing to do. And my wolf doesn’t like it.”

“You’re not the King, Robb.” The brunette boy adds, jumping from a low branch into the ground. “Besides, I think they’re telling the truth.”

“Of course they are, to get off the hook.” He replies, annoyingly. “We’ve questioned every band of outlaws in the Kingswood and I won’t leave until we have an answer.”

“And it never seems to come.” The brunette boy replies back. 

Sadness tinges his grey eyes and Robb watches him as he turns his back, retreating to the line of trees where he’s out of sight. Robb sighs. Both of them were too little when Jon’s mother was murdered in her bedroom, yet when they were old enough, his parents had explained to Jon everything about his parentage and the conflict which now afflicts his paternal family, now in open rebellion with the Crown. Since that day, Robb had insisted in climbing the Red Keep’s walls and seek for justice within every sellsword’s company they come across, in hopes of achieving any clue about Janos Slynt. Obviously, both of his parents have no idea of their errantries, but since their lives as Princes in the Red Keep were so boring, this has become much like normal to them over the years.

After all, one of the nights they sneaked out, they’d also found two little wolf cubs, curled up at the root of an old tree. They were only cubs, so Robb proposed to keep them. But when they came back the next day, they couldn’t come up with a decent excuse to Catelyn other than confess the truth. It was still a mystery how they had kept their pets after all.

“Still, they’re no innocents, Jon. They must know something.” Robb declares coldly.

“Look at them.” Jon says, while the big white direwolf pads towards him in seek for his affection. “They even fell for the old necklace’s trick. It’s obvious they have nothing to do with the man who murdered my mother.”

Jon’s voice was bitter, a shell he always used when the reality before him was too harsh to deal with, and Robb resists the urge to reach for him and comfort him. He hates when Jon insists on dealing with his pain alone. Instead, he only loosens the rope of the net and the band of outlaws fell into the ground with a loud thud. Grey Wind prowls to them, hackles up, growls jump from the deep of his throat like shards of ice on a cold day. The quohorik leader lets out a panicked cry, folding his chubby legs as a futile attempt to stay as far as possible from sharp teeth. The boldest of them jumps to his feet and dashes to the furthest pine or ravine he could find. The clattering of teeth soon is replaced with screams of surrender, and Robb watches the quick departure of the biggest men he’d ever seen, running amidst shoulder bumps and punches. 

Their voices died, then. Sound and time, as well. And the forest comes alive around them like a human partner, with hoots and chirps from neighboring animals. For once, it becomes intrusive just to contemplate the rotation of the stars, in the sky. 

Jon looks over his shoulder. His fingers intertwine with Ghost’s white fur as his face surrenders to sadness. He didn’t know how much time left for sunrise, but this hour in the Kingswood was always like a twin of his own dark thoughts. And just now, the bulk of treetops offer the same clarity than a dark lake full of lily pods. He was even half aware of Robb’s silhouette moving behind him, only after he places a comforting hand in his shoulder.

“Hey, don’t be upset.” He tells him, giving a sincere smile. “I promise you we are going to find the man who killed Aunt Lyanna. And I’ll be King someday, so I can’t really break my promises.”

“Thanks but you’ve been breaking your promises to everyone, starting with your parents.” He laughs, and lifts his own hand to cover his. “We shouldn’t even be here.”

“It’s their fault.” Robb protests. “Did they really think they can keep us locked inside the damn Keep?”

“Maybe they have reasons to.” Jon argues, turning to face his cousin with a frown. “We keep seeing more and more outlaws in the Kingswood each day. I think something is happening…”

Robb looks at him with skeptic eyes, and was tempted to look southward after. He did know the Small Council’s meetings were increasing drastically these last few years, and security within the Castle was something he had not seen in his life, but other than that, he did not feel scared. The rebellion didn’t scare him. Yet, he was often lectured by his younger cousin about how reckless and naïve he could be, especially in these matters.

“Always taking things so seriously.” He says, mockingly. “You’re starting to sound like Sam.”

Robb leaps over a crooked root and collects the necklace from the dirt, then slipping it into his pocket. Somewhere not so far away, the roar of the Wendwater stirs and the fast currents home a large variety of nocturnal creatures, predators and preys alike. Grey Wind and Ghost run to the nearest banks, maybe to take a drink, while the sky was slowly preparing for the first lights of the predawn, blue and purple glares dip into a family of broadleaves and continue to the farthest walls of King’s Landing. 

“I don’t.” Jon snaps, hotly as he stands up. “You should start paying more attention. And— where is Sam?” 

“He’s at the City Gates. I told him to keep an eye on the Gold Cloaks and let us know if they’re coming.” 

“I hope he runs faster, this time.” Jon resolves, amusingly, and his grey eyes collect the first rays of sunlight. “We should head back, Robb. It’s nearly mor—”

“Guys!”

A clumsy and too short shadow emerges then, from a regular set of oaks. He was trapped between a frantic run and a complete lack of balance, and he falls face-first just some inches away from Jon. He can’t hold up his laugher any longer, and offers his hand. How many times he helped Samwell Tarly out of his child-shaped holes was still a mystery, but he smiles at him, sympathetic. He did know the boy was taken as a ward in King’s Landing since his father was fighting in the war.

“What is it, Sam? The Gold Cloaks?” 

“Theon’s giving you a hard time again?” Robb asks, smirking.

He shakes his head, violently, and shifts his panicked eyes between both.

“The— the King—” He says, breathlessly, his eyes fixed on Robb. “Your… Father…”

“Easy, Sam.” Robb kneels next to him and grips his shoulders patiently but urgent. “Tell me what happened.”

“Janos Slynt.” He blurts out, and Jon’s cheeks go the same color as Ghost. Sam swallows, hard, for a couple of times, and says. “They found him.”

 

“Jon! Wait!”

Robb’s voice barely reaches him, demanding and distant, but he doesn’t seem to care at this point. He knows his speed had surpassed both his cousin and friend just somewhere when the shape of trees did a drastic jump to a skin of crowds and avenues. All is almost secondary now. Even Ghost can’t catch up with him, and that was saying something. Once or twice, he would threaten to dismantle an entire row of stalls, or send a pyramid of apples right into the ground, as yells and curses erupt behind him. How much he had longed for this moment, all these years of wait were now meters away from his grasp, and he wasn’t sure how exactly did he feel having the man who murdered his mother just in front of him.

He shoves past two of the Kingsguard who were just outside the Great Hall, and for the scream that followed, he knew Sam had crashed against one of them. The congregation of people was growing thick when he reached the Throne Room and he was forced to stop to clutch at his knees.

Each and one of the thousand blades crowning the Iron Throne was reflecting the amount of people assembling together in the vast halls. The monstrosity of spikes and jagged edges gleams with dark light as a symptom of power. Ned however is standing in the dais, Ice, his Greatsword, next to him and almost as tall and menacing. The Kingsguard was closing the circle beneath the great oak-and-bronze doors and the scarce room left was becoming thinly bearable for the armored knights, high lords and smallfolk. Catelyn had been confined between Grand Maester Pycelle and Robert Baratheon, and her eyes deliberately race through all of them to land on Jon.

“Jon…” Ser Barristan approaches then, clad in white.

“Is it true?” He asks, just when Robb stops right next to him.

Ser Barristan doesn’t confirm, nor deny it. And Jon swallows thickly, knowing what he meant. Escorted by the white Lord Commander, he approaches the royal family holding his breath. He feels something in his hand and when he looks down, Robb’s hand was in his, intertwining their fingers.

“In the name of all the Gods, where were you?” Catelyn yells, standing before her son and nephew.

“Mother, what’s going on?” Robb asks, looking straight at her. “Is it true what Sam said?”

“This is no place for—”

“I want to see!” Jon yells, shifting his eyes between his aunt and uncle. “He’s here, isn’t he? I want to see him.”

“Cat…” Ned calls, while his wife did a sound of disbelief with her mouth. And against her wishes, a quick nod happens.

Jon and Robb race to the Iron Throne and climb it, wrestling to get there first so they have the better view. Jon won, and Robb was confined under his weight, as both attempt to look over the dozen helmets blocking their eyes. Though, after a moment, they share a confused look. The Gold Cloaks are assembled around a body, Janos Slynt was dead. That’s why nothing else but silence and looks was happening in the Throne Room, only a barrier as tall as the shuttered doors. Jon let his body fall back, and Robb feels bones cracking where he was holding his hand, so he spares him a glance. The rectitude of his younger cousin’s face was as perfect as stone, yet a moment or two, the twitch in his clenched jaws was audible, and raw, and his mind was seemingly screaming.

“This was Viserys’s answer when I called for armistice.” Ned says, visibly shaken. “He delivered me the body of the man who killed my sister.”

“But why would they kill him?” Robert asks.

“Because ten years ago, Janos Slynt failed to kill the boys.” Ser Barristan explains, severely. “This looks like something the Targaryens would do.”

“This is a game for Viserys, isn’t it?” Robert growls. “Damn the man!”

What is this? Jon asks himself, angrily. Watching the corpse displayed before him, which isn’t in the slightest the man he had imagined all his life, all he knows now is that someone had taken vengeance away from him. There’s something in his eyes which hasn’t been there for a long time, and tears start to build up behind his lashes. He’s only half aware of Robert’s voice giving instructions to the Gold Cloaks, as if that would set things right now. 

“Jon…” Robb looks at his cousin, trying to come up with something to cheer him up, but Ice touches the ground and his blue eyes dart to his Father.

“Maester Pycelle…” Ned regards the Old Maester with a swift glare, who approaches shakily. “The state of the body. Was it…?”

“Yes, Your Grace. No doubt about it.” He whispers, with a clear note of fear. “It was dragonfire.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your comments!

Most of them were young. Boys, only a couple years older than Robb. Other, could be just around the age of his brother Benjen. Knights and soldiers, southmen and northmen, some even still clasping weapons or their missing extremities. He has to be sure his eyes reach each and one of them. These were the ones who had made it to King’s Landing. The rest died on the battlefield, defending the Realm. He feels the last vestiges of air leaving his lungs. The weight of the crown had never compressed his shoulders more than this moment, and there wasn’t a night darker than this one he could remember. Being King right now, was seeing probably more dead than his Father had in his time, and his Grandfather before him.

His great cloak skirts across the marble floor as he moves between the corpses. Every time his fingers curl and uncurl helplessly was for every one of this fatal blows came haunting his very skin, the skin of the King who as a terrible father had failed to protect his sons. Robert follows him with his eyes, unable to reach with words what was happening in his mind. This was only a matter of time.

“Renly lost in Bitterbridge.” Ned says, neither as an affirmation nor a question. Just defeat.

“The Crown lost one tenth of cavalry trying to defend the Goldroad from Viserys’s second Targaryen army. They didn’t fall into our trap, they smashed it.” Robert confirms, the shadow of his face was only half the commander he used to be.

“Lord Randyll Tarly escaped, I heard. He may assemble the battered remnants of the defeated army and strike together with the outlaws.” Lord Varys adds, with a sick tone. Loathing the sight of blood, he had preferred to be off the council this time but Ned won’t hear it.

“So, the only thing standing between King’s Landing and the Dragon is a bunch of outlaws?” He spits, red, angry sparks leaving his eyes.

The oak-and-bronze doors open and Ser Preston Greenfield, the only member of the Queensguard who hadn’t been killed, enters swiftly, helmet hung in the crook of his arms. He walks to the King, trying not to look down as he did so but his eyes tremble a couple of times, predictably.

“Your Grace, the Queen wants to be here. She wants to see—”

“She can’t.” Ned forbids, flatly. “She is with child. This will only upset her.”

“Yes, Your Grace.” Ser Preston bows, and leaves.

Ned sighs, his hand comes up to comb a little roughly his beard and walks across the room to stand beneath a shy ray of sunlight, the only one which peers through the narrow windows, and which resembles a bit too much the shape of a snowflake on the floor. The North. He was from the North. Over and over again, his words come to his head in a cycle, however each time it was becoming much easier to forget them. Could it be possible to forget he had been raised with the strong winter winds? Or with soldiers each and one of them seasoned in battle? He couldn’t forget, because he had learned to die like one of them a long time ago.

“Varys…” He calls, without looking. “Go to my wife and see she doesn’t need anything.”

The Spider smiles, grateful, bows and leaves promptly. Ned and Robert are alone in the Throne Room now.

“Ned…”

“I won’t leave King’s Landing.” He says, before Robert could continue.

“Do you want to get yourself killed?” He demands, and his booming voice leaves ripples across the thick air. “Do you want to see Cat, Robb and your unborn child dead? We did everything we could but this is getting out of our hands and you know it. King’s Landing will fall, sooner or later.”

“And what do you suggest I do, Robert?” Ned retorts, his eyes like steelpoints. “Leave the Realm to burn while I run and hide with my family?”

“Not run. We’ll just wait for the opportunity to take it back, but we can’t do that if the King dies now.” Robert says, not too gently. “Stannis is waiting in Dragonstone. He doesn’t have the numbers to join the attack but he can smuggle us out from the city and take us somewhere safe.”

“Somewhere safe…” Ned mumbles, ironically. “While others die for me.”

It was the twisted song he’d ever heard. Cynically, he remembers when Robb was only a couple days old and how he had looked at his firstborn not with joy, but thinking of this day instead. And now, it was finally here. He felt the walls of his stomach collapsing while King’s Landing was slipping through his finger like sand, like something too out of his reach. He had Varys, he had Robert, he still had Jon Arryn, and a few vestiges of his army left. But he still, had lost everything. How many times would he have to hear the bells ringing till he knew the city was doomed? And how many Kings before him had thought the same while waiting in the Throne Room for the last hour?

“We will get our revenge, Ned.” Robert declares, and reaches him from behind with his strong hand in his shoulder. “But now is not the moment.”

He only watches him, absently, without seeing. And he breathes, without receiving a single drop of air. For a single second, the shadow of a leathern wing sentences his eyes to a world of black, a world where no howl could ever be heard again, a world where words had ceased to exist. And once inside, nothing could ever pull him back.

The oak-and-bronze doors opened for the second time. This time, it wasn’t a knight but a Lord. A Northerner Lord, Robert thinks uneasily. But nothing like Ned. He was dressed in dark grey plate armor, with a fur-trimmed cloak, and the clasp that fastened it was wrought in the sigil of the flayed man of the Dreadfort, which he knew quite well. There was a faint odor of hippocras to the bold man, the line of torches across both galleries wane gloomily at the mercy of his heavy strides, which echo flatly along with the tolls of the bells outside. He stops a foot from Ned and the sound dies.

“My King.” He says courteously. Robert decides his eyes are too small and unpredictable. Like the tides, they could either be politically correct or…

“Lord Bolton.” Ned greets. “Thanks for coming to our aid when we need it the most.”

“Of course, Your Grace.” Roose Bolton smiles at the implied compliment. “Your brother Benjen is doing an excellent job in the North. But our vows are also with our King. The Dreadfort men are marching through the Kingsroad as we speak to help you fight and repel these fanatics.”

“Good. How many fighting men did you bring to the Capitol?”

“The whole strength of the North is here. I don’t expect Tywin Lannister can do much with his two rabid dogs other than cage them in the kennels after our army reaches its full size.”

“Yeah, everyone knows Tywin Lannister hardly keeps one or two things hidden under his sleeve.” Robert says, sarcastically. There was something odd about this man, and whenever he lays queer, maggot-white eyes on him, Robert knew there was more to him than what he lets out. And he had a weird obsession at looking at his hands, and check if they’re clean.

“I have a force of eight thousand Gold Cloaks at least 18 miles from the capitol. With their last victory, the Targaryen captured at least fifty of our troops and drew a new frontline, expanding from west to east, at least twice the area of—”

“My searjants will do whatever the King bids them to do.” Lord Bolton nods, loyally, but he blinks his eyes as he speaks like a man suffering from poor eyesight. “But, first, we will need to open the City Gates from the North so the reinforcements can march through the city and proceed to the rendezvous point.”

Ned’s eyes are impassibly blank. “I ordered the Gates must remain closed.”

“The army is too big for an alternative route. We will take a higher risk if the menace of our enemy catches us unprepared and dispersed. The quickest way is to open the Gate of the Gods, so the army, horses, infantry, pikemen, shields and baggage trains can intersect the city and make it to the southern trenches in no time. It will give us a day or two for preparations.”

The King turns around to look at Robert, doubtfully. His friend has denial written all across his face. It was against every law of a besieged city in History, also, something the Crown had not prepared the civilians for. Even if his troops had been badly damaged on the southern front, King’s Landing still had resisted its first taste of war. He was forced to sanction a protocol a few months ago, which summed up specific procedures, including prohibitions to light candles at night and late concurrence on the streets, blockades on all trade routes and reserved admissions into the Capitol, the latter led to the complete obstruction of the City Gates. Ned had expected this to last just for a couple of days before the results were so catastrophic. Now, after months of just bad news on the front, there was no closing his eyes. Chaos has not yet installed in the streets but without a doubt, it was just a matter of time. What would be his end now, the war raging outside or the rumors spread in the city?

A low-rank officer rushes into the Hall, before Ned opens his mouth. Flushed, he says. “Your Grace.”

“What is it?” Ned asks, urgently.

“Viserys Targaryen arrived to the front. Our men were forced to yield two kilometers to the enemy.” He informs, shakily, and gulps hard. “They are three days from here.”

Ned closes his eyes heavily and dismisses the young officer, while Robert shakes his head in disbelief. Roose Bolton only quirks an eyebrow but says nothing. Somehow, the Throne Room looks smaller and stripped from its former glory than ever before. 

He closes his hands into fists. A miracle, a savior. That’s what the city needs now. With a voice which sounds less and less like his own, Ned says finally, “Open the Gates.” 

 

“Guys, I think my father was killed.” Sam confesses bitterly, squatted in a far corner of the Red Keep’s training yard. 

His knees were cradling a copy of Dragons, Wyrms, and Wyverns: They Unnatural Story by Septon Barth, which as of today he hasn’t still finished. His eyes would fall from time to time to read some short verses vaguely but then, he wasn’t even in the mood, so he resigns once again and comes back to the fight sullenly. 

“We’ll all be killed sooner or later.” Theon replies. Both his feet were clasped together in a bench, one eye on the fight and the other half-closed. 

Since none of them were permitted to leave the Red Keep, watching boringly a match of slashing swords was the only thing to do, that and also count how many ships they could see gliding in the distant waters of Blackwater’s Bay. Parrying a blow that was meant to his stomach, Jon turns to watch them oddly and then to the sky.

“I wish it was a sword.” Sam continues, miserably, like he was reciting dreadful poetry. “My father was a warrior. All his life, he wished he was taken down by a sword. Do you think the Targaryens would bother themselves using one?”

“I know I would now…” Theon confesses, sharply. “In your head.”

Jon sighs and his hand comes up to wipe a trail of sweat from his forehead. He didn’t know how many days has it been since the last time they saw the city, or heard people other than themselves. These few days trapped inside four walls felt more like years now, and when everybody wasn’t drowning in their own self-pits of misery, they would start to be at each other’s throats all the time. He winces suddenly, too distracted, when his wrist ends up to be the only part of his body supporting a great strike from the disputant sword, and grits his teeth. Then, he steps back just in time to faint the next swing. Robb steps back too, panting, droplets come running down from his auburn curls to his cheeks and nose.

Jon smiles. “Is this all you got, Stark?”

“I hope not.” Greyjoy announces. “My whole money is on him.”

“It’s just not fair, you know.” Robb complains, drained from the hit. His brow furrows impatiently. “We should be out there fighting. What use is practice here? The secret passages could—”

“Are sealed.” Jon tells him. Sam slips a cry, knowing what could possibly signify if the Gold Cloaks had in fact blocked them. Jon crooks his neck to watch him. “Sam, why don’t you come here and practice too?” 

“I can’t.” He says, rapidly, and blushes. “I don’t want to have my face all bruised while I’m trapped here. I might meet my future wife while I grow old.”

“I’m pretty sure the odds at getting a girl inside these four walls are pretty slight.” Theon points out. “Shame though. I’d gladly spend my last day on this planet with one, instead I’m stuck with you lot.” The Ironborn stretches his arms over his head, and throws an impish grin at his friends.

“Do you really think this is the last day for us?” Sam asks, trying to untangle two pages from the book with a trembling hand. 

“Enough, Theon.” Robb snaps. “It’s not the last day. My father will beat them to pieces if they ever come close enough from our gates.”

“But before, I imagine there’ll be plenty of dragons for all of us.” Sam shivers. “Like it was for my mine.”

“You don’t know that, Sam.” Jon tells him, thrusting his practice sword into the ground. “He might have survived. Lord Tarly wouldn’t lose a fight that easily.”

Sam only winces, and sinks again into his unyielding lessons, as if they’re his own and only armor plate. Jon watches him impatiently and searches for the grey sky again, it would most likely rain any time soon. Banks of black clouds were piling up eastward, where Stannis’s ships use to dock, and he could almost feel the fat raindrops sliding across his face and hair already. Suddenly, he hears both direwolves snarl quietly, and he stiffens. 

“What’s wrong?” Robb asks him. Jon looks to him stoically, and then his eyes picks up the clear signal they have had public all this time, apparently.

“Do you know him?” Jon gestures with his head, and Robb turns to look. And a pair of pale but cold eyes looks back.

A boy, probably the same age as them, steps into the training yard, with a slight bow. He had long black hair, and he was wearing a black-leather jerkin that laced up the front, like them. Though, by the way he walks, was like presuming a strong sword arm, which probably wasn’t as common when being so young. The smile on his lips gives Jon the impression he was rather dissatisfied by the lack of blood in their fight. He fights back a shudder. 

“He’s Ramsay Bolton.” Robb says, voice missing affection. “He’s Lord Bolton’s bast—. Son.”

Jon nods, and swallows. They had heard the story of the heir of the Dreadfort, Lord Bolton’s only trueborn son, and how he had inexplicably died, leaving Ramsay alone in the line of succession. Being his only child, Roose Bolton had been inclined to legitimize him after Domeric’s death in spite of the King’s reluctance. Nobody could deny there was still something odd. The boy from the North stops only a foot from them, and again, this kind of pointless, courteous still smile sets on his face.

“My Prince.” He says, reaching out to hold Robb’s hand shortly. “It’s been so long.”

“Ramsay.” Robb loosens his hand, and finds his fingers rather slick from the touch. “I didn’t know you would come to King’s Landing with your Father.”

“I didn’t either. But I told him I wanted to be here too so I could see you again. Though, it saddens me it had to be under these circumstances.” He declares.

“We know why Lord Bolton is here but you sure came a long way from the North only to see Robb. And it’s not like the Kingsroad is a pleasant ride out there.” Theon states, sarcastically.

“You’re right.” Ramsay smiles again, apparently he couldn’t stop doing that. “We went through a lot of hardships in our way here, but my Father cares for the King, as was his vow. And, of course, the future King. I’m heir to the Dreadfort and should anything happen to my Father, he just wasn’t feeling safe leaving me alone in the North.”

“You know Robb’s going to have a sister.” Jon says acidly, before he could stop himself. 

Robb and Ramsay both look at him at the same time. 

“You want to marry Sansa…” Robb says, blue eyes widen in shock, but apparently he didn’t know what else to add. “She’s… she’s not even born!” 

Ramsay just glares at Jon mutely, like he hadn’t seen him before. The previous kindness just misses his face entirely, and there’s something fierce and volatile sitting behind the white of his eyes. Something Jon could relate to a pack of wild dogs. But as soon as it is there, it fades away quickly and he’s nothing but a docile, well-behaved boy again. After a long silence, he breaks into a raucous laugh.

“Engagement, I’d say. My Father had the idea. He wanted to speak with the King about this, of course after the war ends. And your sister… comes into this world.” He laughs innocently again. Looking at Jon between heavily lidded eyes, he smirks. “You’re good. Very, very good. Your concern for your family moves me. Even if you aren’t really a part of it, are you?”

Jon gives a step forward but Robb stops him, with one hand.

“Guys, don’t fight.” Sam wails.

“And you must be Lord Tarly’s son.” Ramsay says again, nodding at Sam, but this time there’s sympathy, and a bit of regret, in his voice. “I must say… your Father fought bravely out there. I would’ve never believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

“You… you… saw him?” Was all that Sam managed to say. With a trembling chin, he grasps the other boy by his shoulders, like he was Heartsbane bursting out of leather-jerkin.

“Yes. He was wounded… but still alive.” Ramsay nods, and if he was lying nothing in his eyes would said so.

“Bullshit.” Theon says, harshly. “Lord Tarly had his troops in Bitterbridge when the fight started. How is it that you and your father saw them when you came from the North?”

“Yes, the fight was in Bitterbridge but somehow he managed to retreat, I imagine that’s what happens when you’re seriously wounded. When I saw him, he was hiding in Loyal Man’s Inn, in Flea Bottom, with a few of his men, but most of the buildings and houses had been put to the torch and he was bleeding probably since the fighting was done.” Ramsay finishes, with a bittersweet tone. “If you still don’t believe me, I can tell you the banners I saw. A striding huntsman on green, did I get it right?”

Sam clasps his mouth with his two hands, and Jon and Robb exchange a look. His friend from Horn Hill still had a chance of feeling hopeful for the life of his Father, but it was still shallow because he probably wouldn’t last long. If nobody went to his aid, it was as good as nothing.

“If you excuse me, I must go find my father.” Ramsay says again. Bending at the waist in Robb’s direction, he adds ironically. “My Prince, I wish you good fortune in the wars to come.” 

And then he was gone. A draft of wind follows his departure, only interrupted by Sam’s choking sounds and Jon fisted hands.

“Guys… I want to go find him.” Sam announces to them.

“You can’t.” Jon tells him, sternly. “I know how hard it is Sam, but we can’t leave the Castle. Not now.”

“I- I don’t care. My father’s out there… If I don’t go, then—”

“Then, you’ll get us all killed.” Theon replies, and kicks the clumps of mud in annoyance. “Besides, the gates are secured and all of the secret passages are sealed.”

“Not all of them.” Robb tells them, and his blue eyes radiate a confident gleam. Jon searches for his eyes, deniably.

“No. I won’t do it, Robb. You know we promised to never use the sewers again. We smelled like shit for days.” He moans.

“Please, Jon.” Sam weeps, and seizes him by the shoulders with pleading eyes. “Flea Bottom is not so far away. We went there a million times already, nobody knows the streets like we do, and… It’s my father. What if I’m the only hope he has now?”

“Sam’s right.” Robb seconds. “We can’t leave him out there.”

Jon sighs, defeated. He knows very well if it were his Father out there, he’d probably do the same. His eyes close, and he breathes deeply once of twice, feeling ridiculously weak. Nothing he was used to. The first raindrops start falling from the sky, pounding on the line of trebuchets ready to assault Targaryen forces, and then, on the mud where they were standing.

“Are you with me?” Robb asks him.

“Always.” Jon smiles.

 

The Doom of Old Valyria had descended upon King’s Landing with a swing of a scythe. He couldn’t believe once in his life he had played in these very streets. Flea Bottom had been his home even more actually than the Red Keep itself, and now all that remains is a line of blackened pyres, on a night which probably no one would ever forget. Robb had known the streets of Flea Bottom like veins in his body, like a vessel knows the disputed waters, but someone had exiled that from his head and agony was all that’s left, agony displayed in the darkest and sinister tapestry he’d ever seen in his life. 

Theon had just poured himself into a scan of networks of streets and alleys as they set their preparations, concluding on a quick shortcut to avoid Pisswater Bend, and he had followed his expert legs blindly. But when their knees felt the first slashes of cold air, they knew something was wrong. Soft cries ripple through their backs and Robb looks to Sam over his shoulder. Strangely, he had not complained during their escape, which was quite successful giving how strongly manned the Red Keep was, but the moment they stepped outside, Sam had launched himself all over Jon, and seems unable to let go of him. The brunette shoved him back a couple of times, but the younger boy still refuses to meet the crude city he had grown up in. And Robb couldn’t blame him.

Each mile away from the Red Keep, he could feel swollen veins tensing around his knuckles, legs refusing to go even if these streets were the same ones he had walked since a babe. 

Four shapes move agilely through the night, followed by two direwolves in their rear. Theon as usual being the fastest and Sam the slowest. Robb could see his friend’s curls bouncing each time they breached a deserted corner but as the street were taking them further and further, the revelation floods into his brain. House after house. Inn after inn. 

The city was hunting them like a giant depredator, with children just as hungry. Sky and earth had melted together in a massive black, and Robb finds himself pushing faster so he wasn’t tempted to look. But he couldn’t ignore the fact that they were alone. The fewer buildings which had not collapsed over their own weight, were either abandoned or reduced to shelters with shutters closed, and doors barred. Something happened, he resolves. His whole body tenses in response, but it could not be true. How could it? His Father was the King and he would never allow this. Yet… He scrubs his eyes repeatedly, trying to keep the dust motes and rubble at bay, and for a second or two, he loses sight of Theon when he ran into the cobwebs of a dark alley.

“Jon…” Robb turns around and details Jon’s grey eyes shining through the dark, just inches from his ear. Worriedly, he asks. “The Gates. Do you think—”

Jon just shakes his head, and squeezes his shoulder, motioning him forward. Robb presses his lips together, and dips into an arm-width tunnel. Flea Bottom was a lowly district full of nighttime activities and pliant clientele, now the only thing close enough to civilization was a broken window’s panel, swinging poorly from the first story of a building. Each time the wind picks up around them, the glass made the same noise that Sam’s teeth. And he could not help but think of it as a bad sign. A terrible thing, that seeps through his veins, and seems to grow larger with their temerity. My Father can’t lose, Robb repeats again, and again. But as his feet surrender to ankle-deep holes into the mud, looking for the safer way to cross which would also help his friends on the back, he looks back on his days in the Red Keep. ‘They were keeping this from us.’ He never felt more like a brat now.

He looks over his shoulder to Jon, and remembers his objections this afternoon in the training yard. Since losing both his parents, Jon was more reserved and methodic than other children at his age, he didn’t give in too much into trust to an outsider. But the day Robb’s Father sat with him to explain everything about his family, and why Viserys Targaryen was after the Throne, he became even more skeptical. It was a constant humiliation to see himself as a substance of a family seduced by power. But Robb could never look at him like that, because Jon was a part of him. Two halves of the same being. And he never gave a fuck who Jon’s grandsire was really. Yet, now, this night, he was afraid it backfired on him. He forced his cousin out of the Red Keep when Targaryen’s invasion was in full swing. And if they lay their hands on Jon… ‘We’re going for Sam’s Father and then, we’re out of here.’ Robb resolves uneasily, burying one hand in his mud-streaked curls. And he would never forgive himself if Viserys does something to Jon because of him.

“This is a little nicer than Clegane’s Keep, isn’t it?” He says, trying to lift the mood.

It works, because for a fleeting moment Jon smiles. Knowing he can’t trust his eyes, Robb steadies himself with one hand against the wall, and breathes sharply. Theon was just a blurry speckle at the end of the tunnel, but he feels his cousin’s calm breaths on his neck. Just, a scream of annoyance happens and Jon is not paying attention anymore. 

“Sam, be quiet. You were the one who wanted to come here, remember?” He scolds.

“I… I know.” Sam was the last one, but the direwolves were clearing the way for him. Yet, alone as they were, it seems like they were being watched by a thousand eyes in the dark. “I can’t see anything, Jon.”

“Hold on. We’re almost there.”

And luckily, it proved true when the ominous walls around them surrender to a slash of faint moonlight at the end. It was a respite. On the horizon, Robb could already see the edges of the city as a looming dark bulwark. He leaps over a crater and uses both hands to pull himself out. The night air rushes to his lungs again, and he sees himself face to face with a long, cavernous street, a set of regular buildings at either side but just as abandoned as the last ones they’d seen. Theon hits his back with a battered wall of some pot-shop and waves his hand to his friends, though the mist hides his face like a woman’s veil.

“Told you it was the quickest way.” He smirks, confidently. Robb crouches next to him, while Sam and Jon follow closely.

“You could have waited for us.” Jon tells him.

“How do you know the inn is here?” Robb asks.

Theon just points his index finger at an empty, ill-looking place. It was barely visible from their distance, the lower story was of grey stone, but there was a huge hole where supposedly the roof had been, probably burnt off recently. Yet, it was hardly Theon’s suggestion. There, on the street, the smell combined with that of a corpse, a soldier lying on his back, as it fought an invisible enemy, with the banner of his House between lifeless arms. The scent of blood crawls to them, both direwolves grunt at the fissure, and it takes everything from Jon to tilt his head to Sam’s ear. 

“Sam, can you recognize the banners from here?” The boy flinches, trying to remember how to use his mouth for other than cry.

“The huntsman… That’s… That’s my father’s…”

“He’s inside then…” Theon states. He was the one who didn’t believe a single word from the Bolton guy, but now, he sounds convinced enough. “Let’s go.”

Four shapes move across the scorched street, but soon it was only Theon and Robb flanking the principal door. Jon had to make sure no one was following them, and also dealing with Sam who refuses to move. Theon just takes the opportunity to lie back on the wall, and crosses his arms around his chest nonchalantly. 

“So, your brother-in-law wasn’t so mistaken after all.”

“Don’t call him like that.” Robb growls. 

“I still can’t believe you’re marrying your sister to him. I’m way much better match than Ramsay Bolton.” Theon ventures, smiling confidently. “And you know I would protect her.”

“I’m not marrying her to anyone. I’m not a fucking septon.”

“Would you stop talking already?” Jon tells them, sharply. He joins both his friends, taking Sam by the hem of his clothes. But when he pushes the door open, rusted hinges creaking after the endeavor, Robb just grips his arm with conviction.

“Jon,” He says, firmly. “I’ll go first.”

 

Jon swallows hard, acidic mixture in his mouth, and stares back at Robb. He should know his cousin would claim the lead this time, and nods reluctantly. They were throwing themselves, with their hands attached and eyes closed into a well which could be as crossing the Wall in the North and born into a land of ice. Or fire.

Robb heads first, Jon behind him, and Theon closes the column, with the two direwolves. The color of a merciless night engulfs them, and four pair of eyes take a moment to watch furniture turned upside down, tables and chair tangled, scattered like twisted rugs on the floor, and broken dishes, and silverware, with still some pieces of rotten fish and stains of wine in the slate floor. Jon is sure there’s nothing else further than Robb’s shoulders, his eyes were probably hurting trying to accommodate to the thick dark mantle in his wake, but Robb slides to the side, and the wall shifts into a staircase. His unshakable calm deserved an altar. 

Sam’s fist was clutching Jon’s tunic so hard he could almost feel his blood rejecting his Targaryen heritage. He shoves him back, and he dips into the steps agilely. If Sam’s Father was here and wounded, he’d probably be in one of the guestrooms, upstairs. But he didn’t look forward to go further. When they reached the top, Robb turns around and his blue eyes spark in darker hues through smoky air. 

“We should split up.” He says. The passage way was long, and hollow, and out of all the ideas they could come up now, this one was the least worst.

“I’ll go with Sam… and you with Theon.” Jon replies, softly, and Robb nods, knowing it was better if each group had a direwolf. 

 

After an hour of looking for Sam’s Father, Jon feels frustrated and yearns for something to burn, so he could at least see his own hands. They'd searched for at least eleven guestrooms, each and one of them in several states of chaos, and the door of the last one just refused to yield, no matter how many attempts followed to open it. There were musty straw-stuffed mattress, which screamed nobody ever slept there. Was Ramsay Bolton only playing with them from the beginning? Jon hits his head in fury. Next to him, Sam’s face was melting into disappointment.

“My father’s not here, right? Maybe we shouldn’t have come.” 

Jon just looks at him, without knowing what to say. 

He opens his mouth but suddenly, Ghost’s fur bristles and his eyes rage with violent red, and Jon’s face was drained from color. They weren’t alone. Strong footsteps pound viciously on the wooden floorboard, and darkness surrenders to a more dull grey, a human shape as tall and broad as a door. A knight who reeks of blood and flesh, but not as much as his murderous shield, a red dragon with three heads. We are so stupid, Jon thinks, in a rush. We’d run just into a trap. For the first time in the night, he didn’t hear Sam’s screaming. He didn’t even hear his own rough breaths, thrashing with the swirls of ash. He saw feral red blocking his way, and the dragons so close their tongues of fire could almost lick his cheekbones, but it was the sword which exiled forever the light of the world. 

He remembers a voiceless lament. He remembers the sound of bones cracking, and then an eternal fall to the pits of devastation.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Warnings: War Description, very Angst (only this chapter)

“Jon! Jon! Please, wake up!”

Jon opens his eyes slowly. His whole body aches. He takes a few seconds to chase the last images on his mind as he cradles his head weakly. The first thing he sees is the dimmed flight of steps against the wall, and an empty room as well, quiet and dark. The strangeness of it doesn’t linger for too long, something snaps on his mind, and then, he’s seeing his own small body falling from the first floor, and the way it had hit the floor with a loud thud. It could’ve been worse, he knows, but something’d sprung from the shadows that last, final moment and then… 

“Ghost…” He winces. And coughs. 

The pain on his left arm flares and he inhales sharply. He couldn’t believe what they had done, how stupid they were to come here in the first place. His face feels tickles then, and somehow the pain starts to fade, it’s bearable now. A weak smile forms on his chapped lips, as Ghost licks his wounds, eyes and nose, his fur cradling Jon’s head. There, Jon feels strong enough to speak, but a painful scream stabs his eardrums and his eyes then flash widely open, absorbing, awakening. 

“Robb!” He yells.

His cousin was only inches from him, hovering over him in a defensive stance and both arms upraised over his head to block a slashing sword, too willing to cut him in two. His only weapon was a dented pole, and he wrestles fiercely… but he was ten, and the man before him a Targaryen soldier, full armored and impossibly well-balanced. Grey Wind was the only thing avoiding Robb’s fate, as his fangs were buried in the man’s heel, tearing and shredding, plucking some curses from his raspy throat. Jon only has time to collect one last breath, he leaps from the floor quickly and kicks the crook of the man’s neck and shoulder with all the force he had left, shoving him backwards.

“Come on!” He urges Robb, taking his hand to pull him away hurriedly. Both direwolves follow.

They smash the splintered door jointly and immediately collapse onto the street. Jon’s breath hitches. He looks urgently at Robb, while the redhead clutches the earth between his fingers and struggles to breathe. 

“Sam… and… and Theon…”

“Sam… escaped.” Robb answers. “He jumped out the window. Theon… I… don’t know… He-he disappeared.”

Jon swallows around a lump in his throat, and tilts his head back. The sky was black above them. The stars were gone, and cold, icy gusts of wind settle in, rivulets of old cold cinders and flying dust sweeps through their manes viciously.

“It was a trap.” Robb says again, eyes bright in anger.

“I know…” Jon hisses, a bit harshly. “I’m sorry…”

“We need to go back to the Red Keep, Jon. If they’re still alive, I’m sure they’d do the same.”

Before the brunette could agree, the road starts shaking underneath them. The din of battle thickens with each second, crescendo distant, but corporeal enough to shake pebbles and trails of rubble half-buried on the ground. 

A booming sound, which Jon recalls from his younger self’s imagination when studying King’s Landing sieges. Crests of winking helmets peer on the distance, along with sharp steelpoints and now a black and red sunset, too terrifying and final, spills millions and millions Targaryen’s banners, so many not even a far-eye could ever see their end. The edge of the world was now theirs. Knives cut deep into Jon’s skin, as the blood on his veins freezes, and he thinks in Sam, in Theon. In every fucking person in this world who could ever believe in a savior now, in glory, in eternal richness.

The sickness never really leaves his face, but there was hardly time to think now.

The wind, the screams, the time are the only messengers now, and tell him to run, run as fast as he can and never looks back. Robb appears to be thinking the same, as his hand reaches for his, and both share a look of unspoken fear and adrenaline, the same one they would if one of their many errantries would end in a precipice. 

They join their hands as the end of the world surrounds them. With one last look, both start to run. Ghost and Grey Wind at their heels.

 

 

Screams of terror, shattered glass, piles of dead villagers, men and women alike.

When they left the Red Keep, the world was made of nothing but gurgling, shrill croaks, mankind just an illusion, and the further they went, it grew worse and worse. Everyone died, and we are alone, Jon remembers thinking. Now, he knew just how wrong he had been. The shock resulting in paralysis on his legs, and knees. 

The streets were suffocated with the vast majority of King’s Landing population, mostly commoners, lowborns, brigands, and beggars from Flea Bottom in a state of total chaos. Everyone who could actually use their hands still was burning their own belongings before they fall into enemy’s hands. As a result, a large number of fire-pits roar from the earth, and chase through the night with whips of fire any desperate enough to run past it. A man knocks Jon off his feet with his clubfoot as he joins the crowd swarming to the Great Septon of Baelor, but thanks to his tight grip on Robb’s hand he finds his balance. Robb just ducks underneath a great wall of begging brothers, and pulls Jon with him, using his free arm to carve a way. It was hard to know where they were going now, which way was north or south. The faster they pressed forward, the longer the distance was, and the tides of torches flashed in unison across the tumultuous district.

“Robb!” He yells hoarsely, over the clamor. His throat resists to speak, vocal chords just in the verge to split. “You’re going the wrong way!”

It wasn’t necessarily true. This was the route Theon had chosen a while back, a cordon of passages and shortcuts to avoid Pisswater Bend. Since Grey Wind took the lead it was only instinct, yet Jon was afraid things now were quite different than they were before. And when Robb digs his heels on the ground, he sees the rightness of that statement. Half a mile of winding road was now a twisted ribbon of blackened stones and isles of corpses, a fierce nucleus of guerrillas had burst in their wake. The influx of people wanes here, and Grey Wind buries his snout into a dead Gold Cloak’s hair, sniffing at it. Jon only breathes hard, the air reeks of blood and death.

“This cannot be true…” The redhead says, in a start. They couldn’t get through. Or at least not like they had originally planned on.

Ghost growls savagely as Jon brings his lip in with his teeth, working on a quick route to Aegon’s High Hill with his eyes. Twin lights from neighboring torches dance deep into his obscured pupils as he stares at Shadowblack Lane. Sighing, he knows there isn’t other way, even if it means running straight into the Red Keep’s Gatehouse. The Great Septon of Baelor is probably ten times worse than this, if that level of catastrophe can possibly exist. What happened on the frontlines? What happened on the City Gates? Robb turns to look at him, his blue eyes blaze in agreement. His hand comes up to wipe out ash motes attached to his red-rimmed eyes, he just breathes the rest in, and clasps his free hand with Jon’s again.

“Shadowblack Lane, is it?” He says, sternly. But flashes a smile at Jon all the same. “My parents are going to kill me.”

Nothing but a desperate choking sound leaves Jon’s body. ‘How can you say something like that?’ He thinks, hopelessly. ‘Why are you still trying to cheer me up even after…?’ Instead, Jon just squeezes his hand, and pulls him through a dark alley. Shrieks grow louder and louder, until Jon is sure he can still hear them even if the fire wanes, and the dream dissolves. Well, what’s the point of all this? He thinks, darkly, as they walk side by side. His Father died, His mother too, and… No, Jon denies quickly. And looks down where their hands were joined. ‘I must not think like that. Once we get to the Red Keep, everything will be fine.’ As he brings his eyes up, and his senses become assailed with the darkest nightmare of all, his lips part slightly.

“Ghost…” He says, barely over a whisper. “Run.” 

 

 

He feels light-headed, like a sailor in open sea. 

Two miles of road had just turned into the longest of his life, a plank where a sinner finds his way to death in the deep, perilous ocean below, and his fingers start to feel numb where Jon’s holding his hand. Like a line of recluses, the city’s population, Jon and himself included, marches through the first Gold Cloak’s barracks, but as Robb casts a glance at both flanks, he squarely concludes there aren’t enough men. His blue eyes align with the tallest crevices of the Traitor’s Walk, the only part actually visible from here, aside from the White Sword Tower, and he knows the archers’ platoons are severely outmanned.

‘I bet things are not any better on the other side.’ Robb thinks gloomily, and wrinkles his nose when a family walks past them with a hog. Networks of streets and shortcuts pour into Shadowblack Lane as the evacuation protocol brims in its highest phase, and he feels like a spore swimming in an ocean of thousands of people. He remembers the sight of the Targaryen’s soldier who attacked Jon at the inn, and can’t help but feel something odd. Something they probably weren’t telling them. No wall can keep you safe, Robb remembers his Father’s words. A wall is only as strong as the men who defend it. His Aunt Lyanna Stark had died inside the Red Keep the night she brought Jon into their lives. And Robb knew many Gold Cloaks which yesterday were alive, today maybe they no longer are. ‘When I am King, this will never happen. I will protect them. I will protect—’ And then he’s glancing down both his hand and Jon’s, entwined together.

“That’s Ser Guncer Sunglass.” Jon says, absently, eyeing the Gold Cloak on his left who is reprimanding an old peasant with a loaded wagon who attempts to seek shelter inside the castle. “Do you think we should tell him?”

Robb swallows, watching the long column gliding to the Red Keep’s western walls. At this rate, he’ll probably meet his parents on the morrow. Yet annoyance crosses his face, since he’d always hated special treatment. 

“You’re so cold.” He says instead, feeling his cousin’s icy fingers through their grasp. Jon shrugs.

“I probably deserve it. It’s my family the one who’s--”

“Stop saying that, Jon!” Robb snaps, furiously. “You have nothing to do with these people.” He wanted to say something else but his voice died when Grey Wind emerged again, padding towards him, something hanging from his mouth. Robb bends next to him curiously and snatches it at once. “What’s th—” A sudden choke takes his words, because it was… a shred of skin. Human skin. It’s Jon’s turn to look repulsed, yet all Robb manages to deduce from this is a single word. “Bolton.”

“Down! Everyone!” 

Screams happen one after the other, and the world kneels to a blinding light, which turns night into day. A withering barrage of arrow fire fills the night sky and descends, like vultures expecting their fill of doomed men. The castle’s defenses answer back six hundred feet above them, and the flat sound of catapults joins in as a dreadful chorus. The evacuation turns into a bloodshed. Rivers of people break formation into twisted ribbons of human flesh, running, shrieking, and collapsing, and Robb sees detachments with Bolton’s shields launching a large-scale blockade on their backs. There was no way out.

 

 

“Ghost!” Jon yells, at the top of his lungs. 

An arrowhead misses his head for an inch, but he’s too occupied keeping an eye on his fast direwolf, running on the van. “Down! Get down!” He yells. And the direwolf slides underneath a raging human barricade. Jon and Robb aren’t so lucky though, and both collapse right into it.

If this is a dream… Jon thinks. But no. This is not a dream. This is grotesquely real. 

Like a ragdoll in a peninsula of swarming bodies and burning barrels, he fights, and shoulders, and gasps for air, both for him and Robb but the bits of nightly sky were there and then there weren’t. Sometimes, they wouldn’t come back. And the more he claws for oxygen, the deeper he sinks limbless until he doesn’t feel his legs. Something pulls him up then, ashore, to an isle of warm air, and he breathes in for the first time while his arms naturally cling to a heavy furry neck. Grey Wind. The direwolf speeds up, strong and relentless, taking Jon and Robb on each side of his massive body. He carves a path ductilely between a sea of knees and legs until he plucks out with both boys on his back.

“Jon!” He hears Robb’s voice. “Are you okay?”

He nods, weakly, wondering if he still had a human form. He feels like gum, now. 

He turns to look at Robb… but something sprang over his shoulder and met his eyes first. The three-yellow-dogs sigil in its breastplate looks hungry for young blood, still not as much as the steelpoint of its monstrous spear which narrows their way, as it did with several other victims in its trail of red. His eyes are impossibly wide. Robb still has no idea his back was about to be hacked in half so when the stars above were obstructed by a sharp edge, Jon leaps in front of him with gritted teeth. Abstracts words ring in his ear, something he vaguely collects from the dying masses, or the dragons’ soldiers… but the voice of a young general, blonde and cruel, talks to him in a hall of white… His blood was his… That’s why they could hear each other, through oceans and lands, through fire and smoke.

“I want what was promised… Only what was promised… I’m here… to fulfill my wish. If someone should ever seat in my throne and call himself King, then this is my answer. No one shall see the sun ever again. King’s Landing will kneel before its true King… a King with dragon blood in his veins.”

Direwolves banners were burning underneath him in piles of smoke. And more keep raining from the sky, like grey snowflakes in a site of rest. But no, that wasn’t true. 

Nothing is lost, still. Not while his hands burn, and his eyes snap open widely, and he snatches a splintered shield from a dead Gold Cloak, parrying the blow from the spearman. He breathes in, body shaken from the effort, and clings to the piece of wood with his life while Robb’s eyes gleam in shock. Then, his hands join his own and both boys were committed to a ferocious hand-to-hand with a man thrice their size. Jon slips a cry when jaws begin to close around them, their wills... never yielding… wouldn’t be enough now… A dull scream erupts from the knight’s throat when a white beast engulfs plate and flesh, cutting him like a slice of cheese. Jon sees Ghost reducing him between his eyelashes, but his eyes were closing. The rest of his small body is seized by coughs from nebulas of ash and smoke and he loses his balance, feeling the earth beneath him as hot as the Sun.

“Here.” Robb rips a piece of his tunic apart, and cleans the streaks of grime and dust from his heated cheeks. 

“Thanks.” Jon watches him, and then detracts his eyes at the bay of bodies. Women were doing the same thing Robb did with their screaming children, keeping their faces clean as fire descends on them. A family of peasants with carts and livestock sidesteps them, and Jon catches their conversation, accidentally.

“First cavalry of the Stark army. Fifteen thousand men slain on the mountain pass near Rosby. In two days, Tywin Lannister’s van crushed House Arryn’s forces and stationed on the northern flank. Viserys joined him from the south. The encirclement was completed this morning when the lasts Gold Cloaks’s strongpoints failed.”

Jon swallows, his knees buckling. The Crown had fallen. The enemy is at their gates and the whole city is screaming that into their faces. Would it make a difference if the make it to the Red Keep? Would it prolong their lives a little longer? Would his Uncle and Aunt still be alive? And what if they find only murdered bodies when they get there? He tries to hold up his tears as best as he can and yet he feels salt on his palatal, knowing how much he had seen without seeing, how much he had heard without hearing.

“Robb, it’s no use.” He tells his cousin, pushing him away. “Look around. How do we know the Red Keep is no worse than this? How do we know our families— aren’t dead by now?”

“We can’t give up now.” Robb says sternly, the blue in his eyes seem like rare liquid in a world where everything burns forever. “I know they are alive. Just— don’t give up, okay? The Red Keep is not so far, now. Just a little more and we’ll be safe, I promise.”

He grabs his hand and seeks his eyes. How can you be so optimistic? Jon wants to ask. Yet, he clenches his jaw and squeezes his hand back. 

“The direwolves will take us on their back.”

 

 

Both Robb and Grey Wind spearheaded through the night. The air shell in their collision is keeping the voracity of faces, steel and torchlight at bay while Jon and Ghost follow in their rear. Soon, the seven huge drum-towers climb deep into their eyes, with its iron ramparts and grim barbican, just like the last time he had seen them. He digs his fingers on Ghost’s white fur and the direwolf reaches his brother in speed. If the outer rings of the city were massively occupied, this inner core was just deserted, only flaps of carrion crows feasting on corpses reach their ears as they press forward. Maybe the fighting was over. Maybe the occupiers had killed everyone. The portcullis was up and the drawbridge was down, and for the first time since everything started, Jon hears Robb’s harsh intake of breath. Grey Wind bends to let him down.

Ser Gared Lonmouth, Ser Preston Greenfield, Ser Jacelyn Bywater. None of them returned the salute to the Little King, as they always did. Their bodies lay at either side of the bridge, their heads were shadowed and Maegor’s Holdfast looks down on them grimly. Its peaks were like spears, which in their lightless sanctuary still build the last hope for the royal family against the Targaryens.

“They died protecting the gate…” Robb whispers. With one hand on the scruff of the wolf's neck, he kneels next to his Father’s men, and bites in a sob.

“They did…” Jon follows, hesitantly. At least, they died together, he muses as he watches their bodies. Just like…

He shakes his head, dismissing the thought. They are home now. Most of the people they had seen today probably won’t, ever, yet they were, physically at least. Robb was still knelt and as Jon studies the distance, he sees the giant bronze gates calling for them from the other side, the difference between life and death. He approaches Robb from behind and tugs on his shoulder.

“Come on, Robb… We have to—” He never finishes the sentence.

The collar of his tunic looks funny, too funny, and when he cranes his neck he does not find his back but an arrow instead, bursting out from his clothes. A web of blood was building up between his shoulder blades, as his eyesight starts to fail, just as much as to think he was sinking in the green moldy water below. He is light as a feather, and the lack balance of colors didn’t stop his eyes from detailing for the last time the fat red drops forming on the bridge. Robb was holding his upper body, and shouting, desperate and crying, full of terror, yet he hears none of it. He hears nothing. 

Everything was black now.

 

 

Grey eyes fight to open up for the second time in the day as pain builds up like a spear on his back. 

Just like the last time, memories are intrusive in his still confused mind, yet unlike the previous time, now he finds himself limp against a wall, in a poor-lit room. His eyes readjust, stranger to everything he sees around. For a moment he panics, wondering if he had died at the gates of the Red Keep, next to the last members of the Kingsguard. But his brain works fast and denies this possibility when the essence of old books and scented candles invade his nostrils. His vision is packed with a faint glow from two torches burning in the sconces, under a cloak of spiderwebs and Jon has to crane his neck to see the rafters at the end of hundreds of bookshelves. 

“Maester Pycelle’s library…” There’re beads of sweat forming in his brow, and he swears the effort is making sounds he didn’t fathom, yet then he realizes it’s the squeaking of rats only.

“Jon…”

Robb was reaching immediately at his side, landing on his knees as he sees the brunette awaken. There’re trails of dry tears in his cheeks. His jerkin is gone and it’s seems he had torn all his clothes apart in the attempt to produce bandages for him. With the record of vandalism and thieving they had sustained, the risk of being killed was something that both of them had learned to live with over the years. Yet, now, seeing his face behind all that misery, Jon was sure this was the first time Robb had ever truly felt fear in its true form. 

“Hey...” He whispers. His temperature was high, yet he knows the redhead had lessened the fever with some of Maester Pycelle’s poultices as he recalls the flavor. Now, he understands why there’re in the library.

“You stupid arse! I thought you– you… Gods, don’t ever scare me like that again.” Robb says, fisting his hands. Both of them are blistered and Jon glimpses the giant library’s doors, barred for the first time. Robb must’ve used all his strength to do that. “I thought you’d left me back there.”

“I… I took an… arrow, didn’t I?” He mutters, kind of questionably. He doesn’t remember, he feels it but still… the seconds before it happened are behind a cloud of smoke now.

“You did.” Robb nods. Both small hands come up to check on the corset of bandages he personally had wrapped around the brunette’s chest and Jon winces again. “But you’re going to be fine. The muscle is only damaged.”

“You— stitched me?” His grey eyes open like vivid onyx and something inside of him warms at the thought of his cousin’s deed. He was ten years old and performed an extremely difficult procedure, all while pushing aside the nerves and inexperience that implies for a little boy.

“I had to.” He confesses, in a tight voice. “I– I don’t know what came over me. I just saw you… falling before me, and the blood— Ghost helped me to carry you into the castle, I cried for anyone to help me but there was no one. I searched and searched, everything was so dark… You were still bleeding and I remembered Maester Pycelle used to keep all his salves, and balms here. Burning the needle was simple, even taking the arrow from your right shoulder was too… but, when I started stitching I–…”

“Shh, it’s alright.” He says, as his own eyes begin to water. He embraces Robb with his good arm, red curls hiding in the crook of his neck. “You saved my life. You will be one hell of a big brother, do you know that?”

“The castle is empty, Jon.” Robb says frustrated. “My parents are not here. No one is… The cooks are dead in the kitchens, the handmaidens in the corridors, and Grey Wind found Uncle Jon’s guardsmen but only their fingers. The rest are hanged on the iron spikes at the top of the Gatehouse. You were right, about everything…”

“How did they even do it?” Jon asks, shifting his body against the wall. As he straightens, he catches the vision of Grey Wind and Ghost at either side of the oaken door, both tired as they were but still alert to every vibration. “There’s no way a Targaryen army could surpass the archer’s platoons on the parapets above. Or the Kingsguard.”

“That’s the thing.” Robb sighs. “The attack didn’t come just from the outside. Someone ordered to open the gates. My Father trusted Lord Bolton to defend the city… and he betrayed him. If he had only done what was requested of him –”

“There’s no way Uncle Ned could’ve known that. Lord Bolton was one of the most fearsome generals in the North and he was clearly the best option to have here in the Capitol. No one would’ve seen treason coming from him, or that prickhead of a son, Ramsay.”

“You did.” Robb says, blamefully. “You told me not to trust Ramsay Bolton from the beginning and I decided to go after Sam’s Father anyway. I was such a fool.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Robb. I thought Sam’s Father was alive too, that’s why I didn’t oppose on the first place.” Jon says gently. 

“If something had happened to you, because of me…” Robb begins, eyes slack on the floor. 

“Nothing happened.” Jon reassures, and brings his chin up with his fingers. “And besides, we’ve been through worse than this in the past. Let’s not waste time talking about that. Did someone follow us here?”

“No.” He shakes his head, eyeing the other’s torso with bone-deep concern. He produces a small jar with milk of the poppy and hands it to Jon rapidly. “Viserys stormed the city from the King’s Gate with his army. The one who hit you was in the infantry second unit, and most of them climbed over the battlements but it was only a small party. I believe Viserys and Lord Bolton met in the Great Hall, and now are with the Iron Throne.”

Jon drinks and the liquid slides down his throat like fire. Did they rally a force so massive to overcome the King’s city army? He wonders if at this rate, any of the other Houses from the Crownlands would come to their aid, but doesn’t seem likely. The Stokeworth were the only ones near enough, yet he knows the old Lady Tanda would keep her soldiers near her Keep rather than defending King’s Landing, if they hadn’t been killed first, that is. 

It would probably take them the whole night to sack every tower in the Red Keep, still none of them knew the secret passages as well as Robb and he did. There was a slight chance to escape… too slight, and now he had taken an arrow wound on his right shoulder.

“Robb…” He says, his voice shaky. “Listen to me. You need to get out of here.”

His cousin’s eyes widen and he knocks a candle stub from the floor when he twists to face him. Jon holds the weight of his gaze with solemnity.

“Are you crazy?” He demands, raising his voice. “I’m not going to leave you.”

“They are after you! Don’t you understand?” Jon yells. “You are the Crown Prince to the Seven Kingdoms. They will kill you if they find you here. I can’t move, I’m not strong enough to run and I will only slow you down if we try to escape. Please, understand…”

“I’d rather die than going anywhere without you. You can say whatever you want, but I won’t leave this room, not until you’re better so we both can.”

“Why do you always have to be so stubborn? This is not a game…”

“I know this is not a game, Jon!” Robb yells, and his eyes shout in the dark. Shards of ice shatter inside his irises, as he trembles, and rants. “I was the one who saw you lying out there, bleeding and I couldn’t– You’re the only thing that I have, I don’t know what I would do if I lost you, so stop talking like it’s the end of the world. We promised, remember? We promised to stay by each other’s side no matter what happens.” Robb catches his hand, and place it on his wet cheek. Pleading, crying. “This is not the end. Even if we are the last two people here, in this place, I won’t ever believe that because we are still together. And I won’t let anyone change that.”

The shock was not only because of the words, but for his shining eyes, his damp curls, his clammy fingers, his wet face, and Jon pulls him into an embrace again, his wound stirs behind him but he doesn’t care. He’s scared, he had been pushing that understatement back for too long, knowing with everything that’s going on, the world demands a man and not a child now, but this is Robb telling him it’s okay to be afraid. It’s okay, because it’s not all that’s there for them. There’s still so more, so much more.

“I’m sorry.” He whispers against red curls. “I’m just…worried. We can spend the whole night here, but the food is going to run short at some point.”

“Let’s try to get some rest now. Grey Wind and Ghost will take the first watch, and we will worry about that later.”

Both direwolves slide into the floor, Ghost’s head comes to rest on his paws and Grey Wind curls at the top of his brother’s body, eyes slack on the door. Robb makes an attempt to rekindle the fire from the candles but Jon stops him, and explains the fire is only going to give them away. With a sigh, Robb let the candles smoke, before darkness engulfs both of them. Throwing a cloak over Jon and himself, Robb curls on his left side and Jon’s head comes to rest on top of him. Their breaths mingle for a second, before Jon feels exhaustion claiming his body and his eyes fell shut.

 

“Robb… Robb. Wake up.”

His cousin stirs beside him, red and sleepy eyes meet his own for a second before they are completely open. His first thought is that something is wrong with Jon’s injury, yet after the second change of bandages the brunette has not complained so, it must be something else. The answer comes suddenly when a faint knock on the door startles both of them, and Robb doesn’t know which of their hearts beat more frantically. Ghost and Grey Wind are immediately up, fur bristling but no sound leaves their tight jaws. Robb swallows, and his eyes go from the door to Jon’s, which confirm his suppositions.

“Someone is out there.” Jon whispers. Robb closes his eyes for a second, and feels blood running underneath his fingernails like an animal caught in a net.

The door creaks again, and their stomachs twist knowing this is no illution. Regrettably, darkness speaks no other language and neither of them can see past the gap of light but there’s no way to deny the footsteps behind it and a ragged breath of a man. Robb sneaks away from Jon and reaches for a short handknife at the other end, hoping he still can use it properly even with all the nerves building up inside of him. His severe look falls on Grey Wind and a command appears, hoping the direwolf can keep quiet as much as he can. But when the doorknob vibrates, Grey Wind growls and his gut sinks. They were caught.

“Robb…” He hears from the other side and his heart jumps. 

Before Jon can stop him, Robb is on his feet and runs to the door, and unlocks it. A grandfatherly face welcomes him, and now he knows he had never felt this relieved when he throws himself into Barristan Selmy’s arms. The old knight holds him for a moment, and then pulls back, clearly as much surprised to see them alive as both boys to see him.

“Ser Barristan…” Jon coughs from Robb’s back, while the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard studies them both.

“I didn’t believe it when I heard it. One of the girls from the kitchens saw light in the Maester’s chambers and told me.” He explains briefly. “We thought you were both dead.”

“We thought the same of you.” Robb replies. “And my parents? Are they okay?”

“Yes, but there’s no time to explain. Stannis’s fleet is waiting in Blackwater’s Bay to take us to Dragonstone, so we must hurry before—”

“Jon is wounded.” Robb points his index finger to his cousin, who still is motionless against the wall. “He can’t walk.”

There are beads of sweat nestling in Jon’s brow when Ser Barristan bends next to him and picks him up. He winces but still clutches to the old knight, biting his tongue to stop himself from screaming. Robb gives him a squeeze for support and leads the party out of the room, with Grey Wind at the head. At this point, Jon is only half aware of the passage of time and space, and all he can do is watch the succession of ribbed vaults on the ceiling while he feels Ghost’s tail tickling one of his legs. He feels more vulnerable than ever when they start descending a spiral staircase.

Every now and then, Ser Barristan would tap Robb’s shoulder to indicate caution. They would freeze against the cracked, stone walls for the longest seconds in his life, waiting for whatever noise or voice to die away before resuming again. He blinks when he eyes the collection of spiderwebs cloaking his arms and hair, knowing they had made it into a passage which had not been used in a long time. It was so cramped walls were actually shrinking and shrinking with each step they take, almost to twist the laws of nature. The air was running short, but his eyes were glassy with humidity. It was everywhere now.

When a jump happened, and water began to run against the bearded man’s waistline, then he is hit in realization. They’re in the sewers.

“Robb, stay close.” The old knight advices.

Waterfalls were creating a deafening sound as their shapes were claimed by a black foamy fluid, too familiar for both boys. Jon’s legs are completely submerged now, though he wouldn’t mind to try a swim to the drainpipe as he feels like a burden for Ser Barristan. The Lord Commander wrestles between walking and swimming at this point, while the wolves dip wholly under the surface, furs sodden and dripping. A curse happened from Robb’s throat somewhere on the front and he hears the iron bars rattling wildly under his fists.

Ser Barristan joins him, but their combined effort is fruitless, and in one last attempt, Robb kicks the bars in frustration.

“We can’t get through.” He snarls, while small swirls of water emerge and crash against their legs. Robb throws a glare towards the wolves. “Quit it, will you? I can’t think with all the noise you’re making.”

“The wolves didn’t do it.” Jon warns weakly. “Someone’s coming…”

Only then, the three of them realize the sounds were actually heavy footfalls splashing in the furthest curve. Five to ten men, most likely. Ser Barristan taps his sword’s hilt under Jon’s body, while Robb shares a panicked look with his cousin. They were with the best swordsman in the Seven Kingdoms, they recall, but also, in a dead end.

“Grey Wind…” Robb says firmly, and the biggest direwolf approaches with a head butt to his knees. “See those bars? You need to open them. I know you can do it, for me… Ghost, help him… Please.”

Grey Wind whines, but immediately commits to the task. He throws his head back with a snarl and attacks the iron bars ferociously. His white brother joins him, spears twisting under both powerful bites until they finally break. Jon slips a relieved sigh and braces himself as Ser Barristan follows Robb into the open hole.

 

King’s Landing is falling further and further behind them. His weary eyes register the last bits of the city on the west before a giant hillside engulfs it wholly, probably the same last slope which opens on the eastside to the port. It’s not over, Jon chants to himself. Ser Barristan had picked an old fishermen track, but this site was one of the most dangerous of the Capitol, no matter if Stannis’s fleet was near to assist them. And he knows the men in the sewers were in pursuit now. If it’s Gregor Clegane… He thinks, in horror. Clegane is a hunter, and he won’t spare the lives of an old man and two children. He closes his eyes, wishing for a miracle and wishing for the grass to slip into sea as soon as possible.

“Run! Robb!” yells Ser Barristan, suddenly. “Don’t look back!” 

The sea breeze blows into their faces and swords of water happen all around them, like a swarm of bees. The waves pick up, crashing unfriendly against the shores. Only then, Jon observes how the old knight starts to miss his footing, as he runs faster. He crooks his neck and, desperation surging in his chest, he catches how the road had given up under a terrible wound, with banners of House Clegane rocking in the wind. Ser Gregor’s van. 

“The old man is mine. You can kill the boys, and feast on the bloody wolves if you like.” The Mountain yells.

With a roar, the frontline opens and opens from north to south. Miles start to reduce under their feet and Jon thinks how two seas can crash against each other. The Mountain runs on the first line of the infantry and the moonlight picks the dark gleam of his longsword like the flagship of his own hungry fleet. Ser Barristan loosens the buckles of his cloak, and yanks it away, so he can run faster. His exhaustion is palpable, and for a moment, Jon fears he might sacrifice himself in order to give them more time to reach the shore.

“There! I can see them!” Robb screams, as he jumps into the docks. 

Jon follows his finger and the fog opens slightly before them enough to reveal Queen Alysanne, Stannis’s warship, anchored in open sea, while a single boat awaits near the coast. Catelyn is there, alongside Ned, Robert and Jon Arryn, yet dread clutches at Robb’s heart as Ned is lying with his chest drenched in fresh blood, probably from a sword’s wound. Catelyn’s face lights up as she sees both boys and the old man running to meet them, and quickly orders a retreat but one of the oarsmen dismisses her.

“It’s my son and my nephew!” She commands, in a tight voice.

“We can’t, Your Grace. Viserys gave orders the coast is to be set on fire. We can’t risk it. They will have to jump.”

Ser Barristan hears him and lowers Jon into Ghost’s back. Robert yanks on his feet, almost turning over the boat, and makes quick gestures to Robb, encouraging him to jump, but the redhead shakes his head in response.

“Jon will be first! He’s wounded.”

Jon clutches Ghost’s neck as the direwolf pads towards the edge. Robb reaches out to ruffle his hair, with a tired smile on his lips.

“You’ll be okay.” He whispers, but Jon catches his hand before he steps back. “Don’t worry. I’ll be right behind you, I promise.”

“Don’t make me come back for you, Stark.” Jon says, smiling back. And his hand falls, just like all his body under the weight of his piercing ache. 

Robb gives them some space as Ghost prepares to leap. The distance isn’t so great but Jon still grits his teeth when they land gracefully on the rocking surface, and Catelyn throws one arm around him, cradling Ned’ head with the other. Robb smiles and turns back to instruct Grey Wind… but he finds Ser Barristan’s body flying past him instead, with a lance lodged on his shoulder. He doesn’t hear the body hit the water.

“Well, well… It seems like the little prince is alone now.” 

Ser Gregor thrusts his sword into the ground, his yellow eyes take a cynic tour as his van spreads widely behind him. Robb swallows hard, as he watches helplessly the encirclement with the sea roaring in his back. He gives two steps back, but trips and falls, so Grey Wind lunges forward with a growl. That seems to amuse the Mountain even more, because the glint becomes sharp as a sword. He raises a hand.

“Kill him.”

He’s only half aware of how the screams happened one after the other, how his mother cries, how Robert throws himself into the water or how his father threatens to stand up. But one thing becomes as clear as his breath. Fire. From north and south, the sea bursts into flames as tall as Stannis’s ship, engulfing the beginning and end of the world, and somehow Robb senses the collision of both fronts in the depths of his blue eyes. He tries to use his hands to pull himself up, but the fire whispered and a large part of the floor cracks and disappears under a bite. 

“Jon!” It’s the last thing that leaves his mouth. Then, he falls. 

 

 

“Robb?” 

Jon turns around in Catelyn’s arms, prepared to see his cousin’s blue eyes hovering over him with concern, but the boat rocks with such force, his eyes close and his body loses balance. When he’s able to use them again, the fire had opened in a two-pronged front around them and the hull under their feet is smoking, a breath of grey and ash. The docks were burning, flames licking the waves which take magnitude in a furious offensive, and the boat threatens to overturn as a result. Terror grasps Jon’s throat and eyes trace desperate circles, searching for any sign of Robb alongside the shore, but there’s nothing, nothing. Robb is gone. And the Mountain, and everything else. He hovers over the rim, and almost falls with his face into the water.

“Robb!” He yells at the top of his lungs, pupils going impossibly small.

“Turn back! Please! My son is still there!” Catelyn cries, with her face soaked in tears. The captain shakes his head.

“I can’t! The fire is too aggressive.”

“You can’t leave him!” Jon snaps, taking the man by the hem of his cloak. “He’s alive! I know he is! Turn the boat back now!”

He can’t be. The words die on his throat, and a single tear slides from one of his eyes. He takes a deep breath and propels himself to jump but Jon Arryn grasps him by the arm to stop him. 

“Let me go! Please! He’s still out there! I won’t leave him!” Jon tries to wrench free, he fights and curses, but the old man holds him in his place with a miserable look in his eyes. Jon releases an inhuman sob. “Please… I won’t leave him… Robb… Robb…”

He holds his hand outstretched to the flames with his last energies. The world starts to fall around him, and now he’s only half conscious, enough to hear Ned’s mournful whispers for his son and Catelyn’s inconsolable cries in his hair. He closes his eyes while black takes away the last bits of his conscience. 

That was the last time he saw Robb Stark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to spoiler this and say Robb is alright. You'll find out what happens to him in the next chapters.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is chapter 4! I read this chapter lots of times, hope there aren't any big mistakes, yet I fear I can't never be completely sure. Thank you so much for reading! I hope you like it

****Fifteen years later****

 

“Excuse me. Have you seen Jon?”

The maid almost runs into Sam on her way out of the room. She blinks up at him, her eyes widening in confusion, and that’s how Sam knows how long has it been since he left. He had just returned to the Capitol after months abroad in Horn Hill, and somehow, the absence made it difficult for his mind to relearn all the accesses he had known from his youth. Yet, as Sam clears the way to let her through, she smiles up at him, and says how good is to see him back. How they all missed him around these corridors.

“So, you’re looking for Jon, then.” She blushes a little, and leans forward. Her voice is hushed, even if the two of them were completely alone in the middle of the hallway. “He’s in the smithy, but I wouldn’t disturb him if I were you. You know this day is—”

“I know.” Sam was quick to add. He apologizes to her with his eyes. “But the King wants to see him. Good day.”

Sam waves to her, and walks away. He takes the stairs on his left, climbing down the steps swiftly. He’s anxious, but at the same time, there’s a certain speed to his legs, laced with fear and insecurity and it couldn’t be other way, Sam thinks. Every time his eyes look outward into dark rooms and somber corners, his breath catches a little on his throat. He remembers fifteen years ago how these very halls had witnessed the slaughter of thousands of civilians at the hands of Targaryen soldiers, how day had turned into night as quick as a snap of fingers, and how the sun never came back again for the royal family, in spite of their late triumph.

He was with Jon, Robb and Theon that night. The three of them had snuck out of the Red Keep to find his Father, following a false rumor spread by Roose Bolton’s son, Ramsay, who tricked them into believe Randyll Tarly was still alive. He never saw Jon and Robb again after they’d parted ways in Flea Bottom, all he could think of was to run as fast as his legs could take him. He took shelter inside one of the wrecked pot-shops five streets down and after hours of hiding in a foul, stinking kitchen, Theon found him.

Just like everybody else, he thought it was all over. But Viserys’s reign was short-lived, for when Ned Stark was recovering in Dragonstone, he had massed a great force of soldiers to take back King’s Landing from the Dragon Heir. Viserys fled afterwards with his army, but the Kingsguard managed to catch Roose Bolton, sentencing him to death. It took several years to rebuild the city, for the damages had been too great. The Red Keep had lost the White Sword Tower and worse could be said about King’s Landing, where only few structures were left in one piece. Even after fifteen years, it was still a memory they could not put behind, not matter what they did. It was the day the King and the Queen lost their son Robb, when Blackwater Bay was set on fire. For years, the King had arranged searching parties across the Seven Kingdoms, holding onto the illusion he wasn’t dead. They were all fruitless, for Robb Stark was never found, neither was his direwolf. After the war, three more children had been born to the royal family, Sansa, Arya and Bran. But Catelyn never smiled again.

Given the grief they still hold deep in their hearts, Ned had issued a royal decree to all twenty-five year old men in the Realm, who share some resemblance with the lost prince, to present themselves before court. As a result, the Red Keep was daily flooded with hundreds of redheads claiming to be the true Robb Stark. Some of them were really alike, but in the end, it was never him.

Sam sighs. When he steps outside, the castle's grounds broaden under his feet. He doesn’t have to look twice to know where Jon is. The sound of the hammer and the anvil guides him through a misty morning across tall towers and bustling soldiers, and so he approaches carefully. It always begins around the same hour, Sam thinks, stuffing his arms inside his big cloak as his pace becomes erratic.

“Ghost!” He yells happily.

The white direwolf raises his head from his paws, napping against the smithy’s door. He sees the stranger just a few paces from him with small eyes, since he’s not used to other humans coming here. When it couldn’t be anyone else but Sam, he releases the ground with a jump and bumps his head against Sam’s knee. 

“What are you doing here?” Sam pets his head. “You should be hunting in the woods. This looks like… awfully boring to you.”

“He’s not complaining.”

Jon pauses to take a stained cloth and wipe the sweat off from his chest and shoulders. The piece of work in the anvil look only half-done but still Sam mentally counts how many manacles and fetters pile up between his feet. From this distance, it looks like a job for twenty men instead of one, but he knows just how Jon’s body had grown these last few years to be up for the task. At twenty-five, no longer a boy but a man, he’s even bigger than his uncle, with a broad, strong musculature and a reserved, stoic look in his eyes. Catelyn had done the best she can to produce the right size of clothing for him but it never seems to fit properly. And the same could be said about his hair. Black curls were thrown over his eyes as if caught by a howling wind. Jon prefers long hair, but unkempt even in his better days. Many of the servant girls complain he might have been raised in the Kingswood instead of the castle, yet Sam has seen the way they breathlessly look at him afterwards, and he knows they really don’t mean it.

Jon raises his chin and glares at his best friend from under his lashes. One of his hands frees his eyes, the strand of hair blocking them tucked smoothly behind his ear, and Sam thinks he sees the curve of a soft smile there. Still smiling, he points the handle of the hammer right at Sam’s chest and holds it. If Sam were to do the same, he knows he’d have the breath knock out of him. The cursed thing landing on the ground along with Sam’s frustration. 

“Though, I can’t say the same now that you’re here, can I?” He remarks playfully.

“I missed you, Jon.” Sam says, softly, returning the smile.

Jon looks at him, long and wistful. “I missed you too, Sam.” He says, his arm softening. The expression between his eyes as well. He drops his gaze back to anvil, then hefts the hammer, and starts working again. A few stray droplets of sweat escape then, and trail down his ample chest with each stroke. “How’s Horn Hill?”

“Oh, you know… There’s my mother, and my sister. Horn Hill could do with a bit of the Capitol’s excitement, to be honest.” Yet, Sam knows there’s nothing exciting going on around here. Not anymore. Silence stretches between them, sprinkled by the hammer’s blows and Sam drops his eyes to the pile of manacles he glimpsed before between Jon’s feet. “Who are those for?”

Jon’s grey eyes darken at the question. And Sam bites his lip, knowing his mistake. Everybody in the Red Keep cradles a list of questions which are never supposed to be asked out loud in his presence, most were about the sack of King’s Landing fifteen years ago. Sam was one of the few people to make the exception, but only when Jon’s mood allows it. Today wasn’t the case.

“Jon…” He says, nervously. “The prisoners are locked in the black cells. They won’t go anywhere.”

After the Starks prevailed, they captured a line of enemies from Targaryen’s legions. The captains were executed but many officers were kept alive in the dungeons. Jon would often go down with the gaolers and interrogate them, ask them about Viserys and such, or at least that’s what Sam wanted to believe. He didn’t want to think of his friend as a torturer, even if it was probably true. He had seen his knuckles the day after, cracked, purpling skin which Jon tries very hard to hide, and the dark gleam on his eyes says what words couldn’t.

“I didn't make these for them.” He explains, coldly. His gaze darts away with practice. “Only for me.”

Sam sighs, and looks away. He knew this was coming. A wide, uncomfortable silence builds between them and Jon lets the hammer slide from his grasp, it hits the floor with a loud thud which half-wakes a dozing Ghost. Without looking at Sam, he seizes another piece from the forge and sets to work again, brushing a fall of black hair back from his cheek. It’s a mask, Sam knows. Because his wounds could never be fixed like these weapons.

“Why did you come here, Sam?”

Sam bites his lip. “I stopped by your Uncle’s office just now. He wants to see you.” 

“He can come here, if he pleases.”

“Jon, please.” Sam begs. “He’s the King, you can’t just—”

“I’m tired, Sam.” Jon’s hair slashes across his face when he whirls back to Sam. His eyes were wide, and filled with rising anger. “I’m so fucking tired of all this, you know that. I asked to be left alone, not once, but many times and yet—”

He hides his face behind his black curls, protecting Sam from the rawness of his own emotions. Sam doesn’t go on and watches his friend in fretful silence. After one or two deep exhalations, Jon comes back to himself, his anger settling into something more bearable. Sam swallows and tilts his head back to Ghost, who curls his giant body into a tiny ball, telling him it was safe to go.

“It might be the real, this time.”

“It’s not. The real Robb is dead.”

“As I said, you don’t know that.” He spreads his hands and steps forward, until his shadow obscures daylight on Jon’s skin. “The truth is nobody saw or heard from Robb in fifteen years. His body was never found, and your uncle truly believes he’s still alive. And so did you, once.”

“That was a long time ago.” Jon says, softly. His lids flutter close then, breathing out. “It’s what I told the girls when they asked me, that’s all.”

“You know I don’t believe that.” Sam smiles sadly. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near you if Arya learns you’ve been telling her lies. Just do it, for them. And for your Aunt.”

Jon sighs, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. When he drops back his arm, Sam notes he had only spread it until his skin was glossy and red. Jon’s eyes land on Ghost, who immediately jumps and wags his tail impatiently, a message he receives as give up. For a moment, Jon considers going bare-chested and see the scandalized look on his Uncle’s eyes, yet he knows how impolite and ungrateful that would be. Instead, he throws the jerkin over his shoulder and smirks at Sam, saying with his eyes he owes him a cup of wine later. Then, he leaves.

 

 

He always hated this part of the castle. 

As Jon approaches the Small Council’s Hall, he can’t help but brush his fingertips against the stone walls, the rugged edges of it catching on the callouses of his skin. At his side, Ghost walks almost noiselessly and casts a big shadow both on the wall and on Jon’s knees. He often doesn’t come up here, preferring to skirt across the castle’s grounds where speed is allowed. Jon is thankful for the company, yet he sees the wolf’s only interested in sniffing the slabs of stone on the floor and the life forms they hold, so that earns both a roll of eyes and a soft pet on his torso. 

“You’re hopeless.” He mutters to him. 

He stops for a moment outside the big oaken door, and looks down at the mud poking out from the sole of his boots. He feels like a chastised child all of the sudden. Jon sees his own breath leaving brokenly his body, how it escapes in wheezes that seem to go on with the growth of the day. It was too late to turn back now, yet there was nothing in the world he would love more, he thinks unamused. The day was too bright to be stuck in a stuffy room with bickering old men, and he almost laughs at how mild that sounded. If only that were the reason.

The door creaks open before he can knock.

“We were starting to think when will you make an appearance.” One of the guards whispers to him, as he lets him in.

Sunlight was streaming through one of the windows when Jon steps into the paneled room, catching the line of tapestries with the direwolf’s head of the Starks hanging from the walls. The fire crackles in the hearth, and his four-legged friend lies down in front of it while the session is in need of him. The table has been removed some time after the war, and now the chairs are disposed in a semi-circle, now facing Jon. He sees Robert Baratheon, round face framed with white hair now thanks to the late wars, but the way the snores fills the room tell Jon nothing has changed still. Yet, he can’t blame him. Maester Pycelle’s dull voice would bore anyone to death, anyone crazy enough to invest time on this.

“The Small Council is in very need to perform this kind of procedures after the war to ensure our Prince is in fact no impostor. As you can see, I took the liberty to elaborate a serial of questions, with the King’s fully consent of course. Explaining them to you know would be weary business, but as Great Maester of the Citadel it is my duty to do it anyway. Each one of them serves the purposes of the Crown, and the Prince’s most intimate records as well. For example, this one—”

“Thanks, Maester Pycelle. I think you made your point.” Jon Arryn says at once, his bald head glittering under a shaft of light. He clears his throat when he hears Jon’s chair scraping at the floor. “But since the King’s nephew is here now, maybe we can leave him the honors.”

“Jon?”

Ned Stark angles his grey eyes to catch the other twin gaze at the other end of the room. Jon looks back at the King, forcing a smile that says all the opposite, since he was using all his strength to stop himself from running away. He barely dares to look at his Uncle these last few years without feeling inexplicably empty, or drown in guilt. The King’s hair is completely white now, and his face though still hard, is lined and withered with tales of so many battles. It was hard to think of this man as the one he had been fifteen years ago, since flesh was prominently absent, reducing him to a feeble old King whose grief had taken its toll. And Jon doesn’t have to look harder. The loss of weight is so visible the Crown does not longer fit his head, and even if the subject was kindly pressed a couple of times, the King had refused the goldsmiths’ suggestions to reform it. 

Ned gestures Jon to sit down and join them, since it’s not very decent to stare so fixedly at one of the requesters, especially if it’s a young, redheaded man like this one. It takes him a couple of seconds to realize this. 

“Please, Jon. Would you do me the honor?” Ned asks.

He could hear chuckles behind him, the guards most like, as he guiltily studies the guest, knelt before the royal quartet. Taking in the hair, too red, a young face filled with many freckles. Body way too lean and skinny, and when the man raises his chin, there is… nothing. His eyes… yes, his eyes were blue. But not the shade of blue he’s looking for. He might as well have Redwyne’s bloodline rather than northern Stark. _It’s been so long, and yet I still can remember every inch of him._ Whether that’s a blessing, or a curse. Yet given these last few years, and how he had lived without living in the slightest, Jon feels for the latter. He starts when a sigh full of disdain pulls him out of his reverie.

“Is this really necessary?” The fake Robb says, and Jon’s brow furrows. Yes, definitely not him. “Jon, why don’t you tell these people who am I?”

“As I said before, the Crown insists on this kind of—”

“No, he’s right, Maester Pycelle.” Jon says at once, startling the other members of the Small Council. His eyes hardly leave the arrogant man who’s stifling a yawn in Jon’s direction, and his eyebrows rise over his hairline at how unimpressive that is. “Maybe I should tell them who you are. But since I’m not in the mood, maybe I should let someone else do it. Boy, come here.”

Something which sounds like a curse, and then a ‘what the fuck-’ spills from the man’s lips, as Ghost stalks towards him. The direwolf doesn’t even growl, in fact right now he’s as harmless as Arya’s cats when he sniffs the man’s exposed boot, but a sick green surges on his face all the same. It was the only thing amusing enough of these appointments, Jon thinks with a sly smile.

“You don’t know who he is?” Ned asks, eyeing the scene suspiciously.

“O-of course…” The fake Robb stutters, sweating profusely. “I just… I— uhm, I’d always preferred horses.”

“That’s funny.” Jon Arryn says, humorlessly. “Because the Prince excelled in everything except horseriding. He always came second after Jon.”

There’s a constant hesitation to this man. When it comes to answer these simple questions, his eyes would flicker to the floor as if avoiding the inquisition. That was one of the first lessons for future Kings, if not the very basics of it, and Jon remembers Robb age three never eluding the other’s gaze, because it was the same as eluding responsibility. Maester Pycelle folds the scroll of parchment between bony fingers as the King’s unbreakable patience falls an inch.

“I have one last question for you.” He says, impassibly. “How did you and Jon escape the Castle fifteen years ago?”

That was often the last question and the hardest since only three people in the world knew what happened that night. And so these four walls had witnessed the craziest stories Jon has ever heard over the years. They often involved two ten-year-old boys jumping from the Red Keep’s highest tower, or a flock of birds coming to their aid. Yet, one day a fake Robb had come up with a story about how Viserys allowed them to escape after a change of heart. And Jon immediately fled the Small Council before breaking his chair.

 _It’s all a game to them._ He thinks, his eyes flickering boringly across the room. This one’s testimony wasn’t different from hundreds he heard in the past, none of them even an inch close to the truth behind it all. _And while the Small Council loses time with silly matters, the man who killed Robb is alive somewhere out there._

“Thank you for your… creativity. The guards will see you out.” The man stumbles to his feet and leaves through the door without further speech. “Well, now, to the nex—”

“No.” Ned says, determinately, drawing all eyes on him. He sighs sadly, and says. “It’s enough for today. Please, leave us.”

And it’s clear to Jon his Uncle doesn’t mean him. So, he lingers behind as Robert, Uncle Jon and Maester Pycelle rise from their seats. Before closing the door, Jon catches their debate about certain measures like Robert’s warhammer to narrow spirally the numbers of requesters. Ned’s look falls visibly and Jon fights back the urge to bite his lip, for he knows too well the disappointment in the older man’s eyes. For the first time in his life, he takes in how old and aged his Uncle look right now. He stands up, hands clasped behind his back, and quietly starts pacing the room while Jon follows him with his gaze. Just when he thinks that was all, Ned clears his throat.

“I thought he was the one.” His voice was far-off. 

“I’m sorry, Uncle.” Jon tells him, eyeing Ghost who is sniffing the lingering scent. 

The angle of the King’s spine is sharp, bones just too pronounced, lines deeply etched onto his face. His condition had only worsened with the passing of years and sometimes Jon fears there’s more to it than what he lets it show. His eyes drift down to his trembling hands, and there, he sees a crumpled letter, hanging open for Jon to read. He can’t though, and it preoccupies him. Just as much as his Uncle cracking voice and the tired flutter of his lashes as he observes the city. 

“These past few years,” The Kings says, and Jon brings his eyes back up. “I’ve seen hundreds young men coming through that door pretending to be my son. Acting like him, talking like him, looking like him.” His grey, vacant eyes leap from the window to Jon's, and the brunette feels a cold hand closing around his throat. “Do you know what’s it like?”

 _Yes, I do._ He thinks, biting his lip. He doesn’t answer, but says. “Do you think we should stop?”

A part of Jon wants to feel happy about this, yet… His hands ball into fists.

“No.” Ned says, after a long silence. “I can’t do that to Cat. I can’t do that to any of my children.” Breathing hard, he opens his hand and traces the lines of callouses on his palm. “Robb is alive, Jon. I know it, I feel it.”

“So you’ve said.” Jon whispers, distractedly.

“Cat heard you the other day talking to Theon.” He says, using the emotionless stare of the Starks. “You want to go back to Summerhall.”

Jon swallows, and says nothing. It wasn’t a question, nor an affirmation. After Viserys lost the war and fled from the Seven Kingdoms, he had known all his life his birthright lays within Summerhall, his ancestral house. He was after all the heir of House Targaryen now. His paternal family had committed the cruelest crimes against the Crown, but his father Rhaegar was one of the few who wanted to make things right, and even if he was dead now, it was Jon’s wish to carry on with the Targaryen’s atonement for everything they’d started since then. He never really belonged in King’s Landing, and after Bran is crowned King –if these funny little questionings lead them nowhere –he imagines he could serve his little cousin from his rightful place in the South. It was still a dream, however. The fortress was in ruins and there was a small chance Viserys may still be a threat if he wasn’t found, so as far as that remain unsolved, then he wasn’t in the position to decide now.

“You know I can’t stay here forever, Uncle. Summerhall is my birthright. I’m the only hope you have to bring back the Targaryens under your trust again.”

“I know. It’s not safe to say so just now, but I’ve always known you—” He trails off. “Your Aunt didn’t take the news so well, I’m afraid.”

“What do you mean?” Jon's brow furrows.

“She believes Sansa is ready for… well, for a political marriage once you leave the city. And the Lord of Driftsmark offered his firstborn as well as his good intentions to join our Houses.”

“What?” Jon practically yells, widening his eyes.

His throat tightens with only the thought of it. The Lord of Driftsmark was a Viserys’s supporter, even if all this time they’d denied it. He wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case, for both Houses were always close in the past and it’s no secret the Velaryons helped Viserys during the rebellion.

“Uncle, you can’t allow this. She’s losing her mind.” 

“You haven’t seen her lately, Jon. You can’t know how she feels like since—.” Ned looks away. “Arya practices swordfight with Ser Barristan everyday and she doesn’t have the strength to argue with her anymore. And now this…”

A flash of anger flits across Jon’s eyes, and his fingernails are blue where he’s digging them into his palm. “I lost both of my parents due to the war. And I lost Robb too. For the girls and for Bran, she can’t give up now. You have to talk to her.”

“I’ll try, son.” Ned gives him a sad smile, then walks over to the door. “You might as well go visit her sometime. She’d like that.”

He leaves Jon there, great cloak streaming behind him as he walks out. The Targaryen heir only stands there alone, clenching his jaw in solitude. All he wishes to do now is punch the wall with his bare fists. 

 

 

“Well, that’s a sight I haven’t seen in a long time.”

Jon freezes on his next step. So much of reaction after everything he heard this morning. His head was still spinning after he walked away from the Small Council’s Hall and wasn’t exactly sure where his feet were taking him, until it was too late. The training yard, where he used to train in arms when he was a little child. The scar on his back gives Jon a twitch as he was minimally pushed back into all the years he avoided this place as much as possible, but the earthy flavor was the first thing that rushes back, along with a smell of horseshit and humus now widely spread about thanks to the late rains. The past dances across too, but he ignores it, as he takes in the new occupants which replace now the ghostly shapes of boys, princes to be, in the tender of their youth. Blissfully ignorant of what was to come. 

It’s highly different now, Jon grants, and while Ser Barristan invests this too solemn stare following his greeting, Arya who is dueling him of all people, just whirls and her face breaks into a broad smile when she sees him.

“Jon! Did you come to see me fight?” She asks, waving her wooden sword and trying with a stance, she knows, would make her cousin proud.

“The way I see it, you’re far better than me.” Jon says, with a gentle smile. “I’d be more careful if I were Ser Barristan.”

The old knight gives both cousins a satisfied grin, which also serves as a wordless appreciation towards the eldest cousin in his bravery to come here, but his arms tremble visibly when he thrusts the sword into the earth, and his face gives into pain, only for Jon to notice. Ser Barristan had been seriously injured in Blackwater’s Bay when he tried to fight back the Mountain. He fell into the sea, and only managed to survive afterwards when Robert swam and took him out. He had been incredibly guilty afterwards, saying he should’ve protected Robb with his life. The only was of redemption, he decided, was to serve the rest of the Stark’s children as if they were the little Prince he had lost. It was still a promise he desperately clang to, even if his body no longer accompanies his will. 

“You’re welcome to join us any time you want.” The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard says, even if he knows the answer he’d probably get. Jon had quitted fighting a long time ago.

“Sorry, I don’t want to give Aunt Cat any more nightmares.” The brunette glances back at Arya with a playful light on his eye. “Just like a certain lady I know.”

“I don’t give her nightmares!” The girl pouts. “And I’m no lady!” 

He only smirks, then sits down on the wooden steps with his arms around his knees. As far from them as he physically could. Still, Arya takes this as a pause in her training and drops her wooden sword, then breaks into a race towards him, her face flushed and sweaty.

“You were with Father, weren’t you? Did you find him? My older brother?” She asks hurriedly. Jon frowns.

“No.” 

“So, it was another actor?” She crosses her arms around her chest. Her face is twisted into a scowl. “You want me to kick his ass for you?”

Jon has to smile at that. He had always been so proud of her. He loves Sansa and Bran too, but the moment Arya was born she had clung to him, and he considers her his true little sister. Everybody in the Castle speaks about how much she takes after Lyanna, his mother, and that was something Jon had learned to cherish about her. 

“Why don’t you do me a favor instead? Go check on Bran for me, while I talk to Ser Barristan alone for some minutes.”

Arya scowls but still complies, for if there’s anyone in the Castle she had learned to be discrete for, it’s Jon. After her brown locks of hair disappear in the distance, wildly bouncing behind her, Jon allows his face to shift back into steel. Ser Barristan’s balance is the same as a winning sword in battle, elegant and graceful, yet his old eyes are not so keen, especially to discern the boy in the burning city, a sweet boy full of dreams of his own, from this man he had become.

“So, you said you don’t want to fight anymore, but apparently that doesn’t apply to the little night visits I keep hearing about in the black cells.” 

Jon just rolls his eyes. “Being spying on me, haven’t you?” He says, distractedly. His grey eyes seek the lined ones with a speck of interest. “You knew… about Lady Stark?”

“Yes, Jon. She’s… not well. Consumed by grief, some say. I’m afraid her children are too young to see it, and even more to endure whatever commitment they are placed into because of it.”

“My Uncle won’t allow it.” Jon says hotly. “I won’t allow it.”

“I’m sorry to tell you this, but you don’t have a saying in your cousins’ futures. Especially, if yours is just as uncertain.” Ser Barristan tells him, eyeing him carefully. “You’re twenty-five. The longer you hold up your own marriage’s plans, then—”

“I don’t care about that.” 

Jon scowls, watching the pageboys from the castle retrieving the practice weapons thrown about, to stuff them back into the armories. Maids on the far galleries wink their eyes at him as they go, with their arms full of baskets. But his eyes instead halt on the line of Jon Arryn’s guardsmen, marching towards the Tower of the Hand with lances over their shoulders. He lifts one eyebrow as he remembers something.

“My Uncle received a raven this morning?”

“Yes.” Ser Barristan nods. His expression was hard to read. “Someone who looked too much like Sandor Clegane was seen recently on the Stepstones. It seems like some pirates had taken him captive on the isle. They still can’t confirm if he’s the real one.”

Jon widens his eyes. Sandor Clegane was one of the few captains from his brother Gregor’s army to elude the King’s justice fifteen years ago. His whereabouts after the war were a mystery, and the common belief was that he had been killed that night.

“Is any of our captains going to investigate?”

“Yes, one is.” The old knight says, a knowing glint flashing shortly across his eyes. “Theon Greyjoy.”

 

 

He quietly makes his way up the stairs to the royal bedchambers, knowing right with the intensity of the candlelight how late it was. It was easy to miss track of time when he spent the entire day looking for Theon across the city, or the brothels, in his case. When the sun was no longer shining in the sky, he decided he should leave it until tomorrow, citing a few bad experiences when he was late to wish his little cousins goodnight. Arya particularly, was very prickly about it. Yet, Jon stops a few inches from the door before daring to cross it. It will do them little good if he strides in with concern screaming from his face, as hard as it was to push it down after the news of Sandor Clegane. It seems nearly impossible when the thought was piercing his skull, since if this man was in fact alive, it was their fist critical lead to Viserys, which could result in his hypothetical encirclement.

Jon gnaws on his lip. Then, after gathering strength, pushes the doors open.

Arya and Bran were already asleep, both of them curled under a heap of furs and blankets in Bran’s bed. _Gods, she’s going to be so mad at me tomorrow._ Jon thinks, as he clears the way to Bran’s side and sits on the side. His little lashes fan over his cheeks, and Jon reaches out to stroke his chestnut hair tenderly. Well, tomorrow he will have to come up with a decent excuse of why he ditched bedtime stories. Though, the evil side of him was actually relieved, since he loathes telling the same over and over again. Stories which promised a happy ending, but afterwards—

“Jon?” The brunette looks down, sees Bran’s wide eyes shining through the dark.

“Sorry, Bran. I didn’t mean to wake you.” He says apologetically, flashing a smile at his cousin’s sleepy face. “Go back to sleep.”

“I had a bad dream.” The child tells him, voice only above a whisper as to not wake his sleeping sister. There’s a note of fear, and Jon supposes all children are scared sometime in their lives, yet the way fear lives in his seven-year-old cousin it’s a conclusion Bran is actually an adult trapped inside a child’s small body. And that wasn’t healthy. Catelyn needed to stop neglecting them, yet all his Aunt ever does is isolate herself in her room. Jon does not remember the last time he had seen her in the daylight, even to visit the Sept.

“What about?”

“I don’t know.” Bran shrugs, tilting his head to see Jon fully in the eyes. “I don’t remember it very well. But…” His head sinks into the pillow, creasing it a bit, as he tries to gather his thoughts. After a long moment, he sighs and shakes his head. “There was a man… a blonde man with dragons. They were huge… and flying all over King’s Landing.”

It wasn’t the first time Bran tells him about this kind of dreams. Jon would be surprised if he didn’t have them. Everyone here had their own type of sequels after the Targaryen’s Rebellion, and even if Bran hadn’t even been born during that time, it was very possible that the child had somehow managed to channel his mother’s phobia. The city itself was a big scar, and its walls exist now like flags of imprisonment, never freedom.

“Will you keep me safe, if something happens?” Bran asks, shyly.

“Of course.” Jon smiles. He leans forward, and plants a kiss on his cousin’s forehead. “I will never let anything happen to you. Or your sisters. Now, go back to sleep.”

He stands up, then walks to the hearth as to add a few logs, and the fire crackles merrily. He spins over his heels when he hears faints knocks on the door. With a playful roll to his eyes, Jon opens it, and there’s a boy of twelve, though he was only a head shorter than him, standing on the doorway and swaying over his heels shyly.

“Erhm— Jon. You’re here. Can I— Can I see Arya?” He asks, blushing, eyes are fixed on his feet. Jon leans against the door, and scratches his beard with amusement.

“It’s a little bit late now, don’t you think Gendry?”

“I know.” Robert’s bastard son sighs, still afraid to look up. “But my Father is—” The boy bites on his lip and says nothing else, though Jon doesn’t need him to. It’s seems like the post-war era didn’t completely help to rid of Robert’s secret habits, and the fact there were fewer brothels than before wasn’t really an impediment, quite the contrary actually. Gendry was of age with Arya and was the only bastard son Robert had been inclined to bring to King’s Landing, in hopes to encourage some kind of friendship between them, just like he, his cousin, and their two friends had. Jon was glad, and since Catelyn insisted on acting like a thoughtless mother, Arya needed a friend to cope with her family. He had to admit, with a sad smile on his face, even after losing both of his parents, his childhood was one of the happiest moments in his life. “Can I stay here, please?”

Jon nods, with a half-smile, and opens the door to let him in. Nodding his thanks, Gendry climbs onto the bed, and settles next to Arya. 

Yes, his childhood was one of the happiest moments for him, but still, someone had taken that away from him. And every night was a reminder that someone had to pay, and with a dark, unsettling grin, Jon knows anyone would do, as long as he wasn’t clean. 

There were still too many rats in King’s Landing, too many. 

 

 

The iron chain rattles once, then twice, as the gaoler with sunken eyes opens the way to the line of cells. The glow of torchlight reflects on the puddles spread about on the slick floor, like the closest thing to sunlight they’d ever see three levels underground. Being this far from the actual world, he feels he finally sees some clarity, as innocence can never bloom on a place like this. The gaoler’s wooden club falls hard and culminating on the set of iron bars, and the last cell is filled with an earsplitting noise, which almost creeps up to the Red Keep’s highest towers. A pair of putrid, crystal eyes opens in the middle of the dark, savoring the taste of company which was denied to him for fifteen years. His head was hung like ready for the gallows, but he finds easy to watch the glare at the other side of the bars, and the shape of a man he knew too well. The cynic slash of a smile is evident, succeeded by cackles, and Jon sees a toothless mouth, and a face just too deformed, caked in brown blood and dirt and soot. Consumed, and yet, mocking.

It takes everything of him not to put an end to it.

“Jon…” The prisoner whispers, cynically, and his brow furrows under the torchlight. “Hello Jon…” He coughs. The light reserves every part of the prisoner’s body, except his eyes… And Jon has the feeling if he was allowed to take a full look at him, after so many years, no one would be able to stop him. Another laugh happens, yet this time is followed by a clear tension from every one of his muscles. “I… I was hoping you’d bring Sansa this time. You know, it’s getting a little bit lonely down here…”

His fist clenches under his sleeve. The prisoner picks this with the clear message he’d pulled the right strings, and his smile gets wider.

“Do you still miss him?” He asks, darting his tongue out, and licking his bottom lip. “You know, I think I did you a favor. You could marry the Stark girl, and claim the Throne for yourself. You could have the life you’d always wanted.” He spits a glob of blood into the ground, and the glint in his eyes grows sharper. “The perfect little Prince. I know… you wanted him dead even more than me.”

Nothing.

“You still want to kill me…” He says again, eyebrows drawn together. Breathing hard against the dark, the mockery in his voice doesn’t diminish. “Just like you killed Viserys, right?” He lets out a grotesque laugh. “Oh, no. Wait. He’s not dead. And even if you force yourself to feel hate, you know deep inside… you never belonged with the Starks. Never. Viserys is waiting for you, Jon. Your family is waiting for you… Waiting for the moment to see your dear Uncle Ned’s head rolling onto the floor, to see Sansa raped and murdered like the whore of your mother, or your little Bran, his body still and helpless on a Throne that was too big for him. Yes, that’s a day I look forward to see. And the best part is… you won’t be able to do anything about it. Not this time.” 

Nothing.

Behind them, Rugen lets out an annoyed grunt and Jon narrows his eyes into slits. He whirls and hands him the torch, before walking to the door of four inches thick. He spares one last look at the haughty gaoler.

“Close the door behind me.” He says, with promise of pain. “This will take me a while.”


End file.
